Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora

RECTO RUNNING HEAD Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora The Indian diaspora is one of the largest and most sign...

Author: Bhikhu Parekh | Gurharpal Singh | Steven Vertovec

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RECTO RUNNING HEAD

Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora

The Indian diaspora is one of the largest and most signiﬁcant in the world today with between nine and twelve million people of Indian origin living outside South Asia. With successive waves of migration over the last two hundred years to almost every continent, it has assumed increasing self-consciousness and importance. Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora examines the Indian diaspora in Mauritius, South Africa, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, Trinidad, Australia, the US, Canada and the UK and addresses the core issues of demography, economy, culture and future development. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the crucial relationship between culture and economy in the diaspora over time. This book will appeal to all those interested in transnational communities, migration, ethnicity and racial studies, and South Asia. Bhikhu Parekh is Centennial Professor in the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics and Emeritus Professor of Political Theory, University of Hull. Gurharpal Singh is Nadir Dinshaw Professor of Inter-Religious Relations at the University of Birmingham. Steven Vertovec is Professor of Transnational Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

Transnationalism Series Editor: Steven Vertovec University of Oxford

‘Transnationalism’ broadly refers to multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the borders of nation-states. Today myriad systems of relationship, exchange and mobility function intensively and in real time while being spread across the world. New technologies, especially involving telecommunications, serve to connect such networks. Despite great distances and notwithstanding the presence of international borders (and all the laws, regulations and national narratives they represent), many forms of association have been globally intensiﬁed and now take place paradoxically in a planet-spanning yet common arena of activity. In some instances transnational forms and processes serve to speed up or exacerbate historical patterns of activity, in others they represent arguably new forms of human interaction. Transnational practices and their consequent conﬁgurations of power are shaping the world of the twenty-ﬁrst century. This book forms part of a series of volumes concerned with describing and analyzing a range of phenomena surrounding this ﬁeld. Serving to ground theory and research on ‘globalization’, the Routledge book series on ‘Transnationalism’ offers the latest empirical studies and groundbreaking theoretical works on contemporary socio-economic, political and cultural processes which span international boundaries. Contributions to the series are drawn from Sociology, Economics, Anthropology, Politics, Geography, International Relations, Business Studies and Cultural Studies. The series is associated with the Transnational Communities Research Programme of the Economic and Social Research Council (see http://www. transcomm.ox.ac.uk). The series consists of two strands: Transnationalism aims to address the needs of students and teachers and these titles will be published in hardback and paperback. Titles include: Culture and Politics in the Information Age A New Politics? Edited by Frank Webster Transnational Democracy Political Spaces and Border Crossings Edited by James Anderson

Routledge Research in Transnationalism is a forum for innovative new research intended for a high-level specialist readership, and the titles will be available in hardback only. Titles include: 1 New Transnational Social Spaces International Migration and Transnational Companies in the Early TwentyFirst Century Edited by Ludger Pries 2 Transnational Muslim Politics Reimagining the Umma Peter G. Mandaville 3 New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home Edited by Nadje Al-Ali and Khalid Koser 4 Work and Migration: Life and Livelihoods in a Globalizing World Edited by Ninna Nyberg Sorensen and Karen Fog Olwig 5 Communities across Borders New Immigrants and Transnational Cultures Edited by Paul Kennedy and Victor Roudometof 6 Transnational Spaces Edited by Peter Jackson, Phil Crang and Claire Dwyer 7 The Media of Diaspora Edited by Karim H. Karim 8 Transnational Politics Turks and Kurds in Germany Eva Østergaard-Nielsen 9 Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora Edited by Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh and Steven Vertovec 10 International Migration and Globalization Edited by Rey Koslowski 11 Gender in Transnationalism Home, Longing and Belonging among Moroccan Migrant Women Ruba Salih 12 Transnational Communities in the Asia-Paciﬁc Edited by Brenda Yeoh, Katie Willis and S. M. A. K. Fakhri 13 Transnational Activism in Asia Problems of Power and Democracy Edited by Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin

Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora

Edited by Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh and Steven Vertovec

First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Distributed in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by Oxford University Press India YMCA Library Building, 1st Floor, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi – 110 001, India Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 2003 Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh and Steven Vertovec for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors, their contributions 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. 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 Culture and economy in the Indian diaspora/edited by Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh and Steven Verovec. – 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. East Indians–Foreign counties. 2. East Indians–Foreign countries–Social conditions. 3. East Indians–Foreign countries– Intellectual life. I. Parekh, Bhikhu C. II. Singh, Gurharpal. III. Vertovec, Steven. DS432.5. C85 2003 909´.04914110825–dc21 2002152432 ISBN 0-203-39829-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-39962-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-27005-7 (Hardcover)

Contents

List of tables and ﬁgures List of contributors Preface

ix x xi

Introduction

1

GURHARPAL SINGH

1

Chota Bharat, Mauritius: the myth and the reality

13

VINESH Y. HOOKOOMSING

2

Hinduism in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

33

ALLEYN DIESEL

3

Culture and economy: Tamils on the plantation frontier in Malaysia revisited, 1998–1999

51

RAVINDRA K. JAIN

4

Diaspora and citizenship: forgotten routes of identity in Lanka

81

DARINI RAJA SINGHAM-SENANAYAKE

5

Culture and economy in an ‘incipient’ diaspora: Indians in the Persian Gulf region

102

PRAKA SH C. JAIN

6

The politics of ‘cultural renaissance’ among IndoTrinidadians

123

N. JAYARAM

7

Indians at home in the Antipodes: migrating with Ph.D.s, bytes or kava in their bags CARMEN VOIGT-GRAF

142

viii 8

Contents Indian immigrants in the United States: the emergence of a transnational population

165

JOHANNA LES SINGER

9

Imagining Indian diasporas in Canada: an epic without a text?

183

HARJOT OBEROI

10

The South Asian presence in Britain and its transnational connections

197

ROGER BALL ARD

Index

223

Tables and ﬁgures

Tables 1.1 Religion 1.2 Evolution of ancestral language and current language, 1972–90 1.3 Bilingualism: Bhojpuri and another Indian language 1.4 Bilingualism: Creole and an Indian language 1.5 Literacy: languages read and written 3.1 Share of rubber and oil palm in Malaysian export earnings, 1970–83 5.1 Annual labour outﬂow from India to the Middle East, 1976–99 5.2 Distribution of annual labour outﬂows from India to the Middle East by destination, 1982–89 5.3 Distribution of annual labour outﬂows from India to the Middle East by destination, 1990–99 5.4 Estimates of Indian immigrants in West Asia, 1975–99 5.5 Skills composition of labour outﬂows from India to the Middle East, 1984–86

24 26 27 27 28 54 104 104 105 105 110

Figures 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

Teacher Muniandy’s kin Workers under Paramsivan Padyachee households Ganesan’s kin Ofﬁcial Fiji resident emigration, 1980–97 Number of Indians in Australia, 1901–2000 Country of birth of Indo-Fijians, Punjabis and Kannadigas Some occupational categories of Punjabis, Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians in 1996

58 59 60 68 146 147 154 156

Contributors

Roger Ballard is a senior lecturer in Applied South Asian Studies at the University of Manchester. Alleyn Diesel taught both biblical studies and religious studies at the Natal College of Education for twenty years before taking a post at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing is Pro Vice Chancellor at the University of Mauritius. Prakash C. Jain is Associate Professor at the Centre for West Asian and African Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Ravindra K. Jain is an anthropologist and a senior professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India N. Jayaram is a member of the Department of Sociology at Bangalore University, India. Johanna Lessinger is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology, Barnard College, USA. Harjot Oberoi is Professor of History at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake is at the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, USA. Gurharpal Singh is the Nadir Dinshaw Professor of Inter-Religious Relations at the University of Birmingham, UK. Carmen Voigt-Graf is a postgraduate student at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Preface

The Indian diaspora of about 17 million people makes a fascinating subject of study. It began in the 1830s in the form of indentured labour, and continues to be replenished by voluntarily migrating professionals and information technology specialists. It is drawn from over a dozen different regions of India, and extends to the most backward as well as the most advanced countries of the world. It covers half a dozen religions, all major castes including the ex-untouchables and Brahmins, and a wide variety of occupations ranging from unskilled labourers to highly skilled professionals. During its history of a century and a half, different groups within the Indian diaspora have undergone profound social, religious, economic, political, cultural and other changes, discarding some traditional practices, adapting others to new circumstances, and evolving over time distinct ways of life. Their relations with India too have passed through different phases, characterised initially by nostalgia, later by virtual amnesia, and more recently by a relatively detached search for cultural roots. Although the Indian diaspora raises fascinating questions, it has received little serious attention. Apart from some earlier work on the history of indentured labourers and current work on post-Second World War migrants, the body of literature is fairly thin, uneven in quality, and in some cases methodologically dubious. As a step towards redressing the situation, the Centre for Indian Studies at the University of Hull, the Economic and Social Research Council’s Transnational Communities Programme at the University of Oxford, and the India International Centre, Delhi, decided to organise a conference in New Delhi in December 2000. Since the relation between culture and the economy, the two central aspects of the Indian diaspora, provides a valuable point of entry into its highly complex and varied social structure, it seemed a most appropriate theme for the conference. We are most grateful to Dr L. M. Singhvi, Mr N. N. Vohra, Anna Winton, Emma Newcombe and Craig Fowlie for all their efforts with the conference and the publication of this volume. We must also thank the participants for their papers and excellent discussions, and our fellow editor Harpal Singh for writing the introduction to the volume.

RECTO RUNNING HEAD

Introduction Gurharpal Singh

In the last decade of the twentieth century the Indian diaspora has increasingly begun to acquire a distinct global identity. With historic settlements around the world, and successive migrations in the last two centuries to North America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the Indian diaspora reﬂects a growing self-consciousness that has been further strengthened by the developments of new communication technologies and rapid globalisation. At the same time, much of the contemporary fascination with the subject in India arises from the economic potential of overseas Indians, by way of their ability to radically transform the fortunes of the ‘homeland’ economy. Since the beginning of economic liberalisation in India (1991), Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) have played an active role in foreign direct investment in India. Their contribution has been recognised by the government of India, which has decided to grant them special economic and legal concessions. This decision, it could be argued, reﬂects a realistic assessment that, with appropriate conditions, the Indian diaspora will follow the trajectory of the Chinese diaspora in relation to China: providing large capital ﬂows for India’s continued, sustained and rapid economic development in the twenty-ﬁrst century. While the economic inﬂuence of the Indian diaspora has been growing, it has also captured the popular imagination in many other ways. Political mobilisation of previously quiescent overseas communities of Indian origin has reached new heights, whether in Trinidad, Fiji or British Columbia. For example, the well-publicised contributions to President Clinton’s election campaign by the high-tech US India lobby or the controversial dealings of the Hindujas with New Labour in Great Britain have brought the issues and concerns of the diaspora to the forefront of everyday politics. New patterns of cultural consumption based on ﬁlm, music, the arts, fashion, food and the media have also spearheaded the niche arrival of the Indian diaspora in the world of Western consumerism. Robin Cook, the former British Foreign Secretary, recently described Great Britain as a ‘chicken tikka masala’ nation, symbolising the fact that consumption of Indian foods (‘curry’) has become a mainstream habit which itself is redeﬁning the popular image of Great Britain. But perhaps most signiﬁcant of all, as

2

Gurharpal Singh

Oberoi, citing Amitav Ghosh, points out in this collection, it is the ‘imaginary relationship’ between the Indian diaspora and India that has been the most creative site for theoretical reﬂection in literature and social theory. Arguably the Indian diaspora today has become the premier subject of theoretical reﬂection in ways that not only mirror the ‘otherness’ apparent in traditional approaches to the study of migrant communities, but also provide the most innovative new departures for theoretical insights in the humanities and the social sciences. Yet despite this intense interest there is remarkably little systematic research into overseas Indian communities that reﬂects on their comparative experience as communities. As a broad generalisation it would probably be fair to say that the existing literature either is based on the traditional historical case-study method within the familiar paradigms of migration and settlement, or has become the ‘text’ for post-structural theorising on a grand scale, often with little relevance to empirical reality. Between these two extremes there is considerable middle ground that needs to be covered if we are to develop richer and deeper empirical and theoretical understanding of the complex processes that underpin the dynamics of change in the contemporary Indian diaspora. This collection of essays arose from a conference held in New Delhi during 8–10 April 2000 under the auspices of the India International Centre, the British Economic and Social Research Council’s Transnational Communities Programme and the Centre for Indian Studies, University of Hull. The conference’s theme was intended to focus on the dialectical relationship between culture and economy in the Indian diaspora over time and in different countries against the backdrop of globalisation. Whilst rejecting deterministic constructions of either ‘culture’ or ‘economy’, specialist contributors were asked to explore the relationship between the two by recognising the social and demographic characteristics of their case studies, the structural changes in the location within the economy, and the changing nature of identities, patterns of cultural reproduction and religious practices. In short, our objective in organising this conference was to begin to lay the foundation for a comprehensive political and cultural sociology of the Indian diaspora that would examine comparative themes alongside the major conceptual concerns. The liveliness of the debates at the conference and the quality of essays presented in the volume attest to fact that the endeavour should provide a signiﬁcant advance towards a more complete understanding of Indian communities overseas than is hitherto available. Naturally the essays represent a broad theoretical spectrum of contemporary research on diaspora, with contributors drawing heavily on their varied disciplinary backgrounds. Each contributor addresses the key issues from his or her major concerns while recognising the overall framework within which the conference agenda was formulated. The end result, we believe, is a theoretically and empirically informed collection that would

Introduction

3

certainly have been greatly diminished in quality if we had sought to impose a tight theoretical mould. Even within this eclectic approach most of the essays – either directly or indirectly – probe three main questions. First, how is the Indian diaspora to be conceptualised? What are the key issues involved in operationalising the concept of the Indian diaspora? Second, what are the consequences of globalisation for the Indian diaspora? Finally, how is the diaspora being shaped by the new global and national divisions of labour as well as new patterns of emigration?

Conceptualising the Indian diaspora Although it might be considered a moot point that the reality of the Indian diaspora needs to be interrogated, how it is conceptualised has profound implications for the study of the subject. The classical deﬁnition of a diaspora, as longing for an imagined homeland following violent dispersal or some other cathartic event, as for example in the case of Jews, seems largely inapplicable to most Indian emigrants, though a strong case has been made in the case of Sikhs (Tatla 1999). If, on the other hand, we adopt a more common interpretation that is nowadays associated with the experience of migration and the attendant anxieties of displacement, homelessness, and a wish to return, then the case of considering overseas communities of Indian origin as a diaspora appears far stronger. This is especially the case if we accept Cohen’s argument (1997: 26) that a diaspora can emerge from a growing sense of group ethnic consciousness in different countries – a consciousness that is sustained by, amongst other things, a sense of distinctiveness, common history and the belief in a common fate. In the case of Indian communities overseas what elements provide this commonality? For one group of scholars religion provides an important element that deﬁnes the Indian diaspora (Vertovec 2000; Parekh 1993). Although sensitive to the error of conﬂating diasporas with world religions, Hinduism, they argue, is an ‘ethnic religion’ that is characterised by a strong sense of ‘rootedness in India’ (Parekh 1993: 140). Some 85 per cent of all people of Indian origin overseas are Hindus. For most overseas Hindus, India, often depicted as ‘Mother India’, holds deep spiritual, symbolic and sentimental reverence that is renewed through regular visits and pilgrimages. And despite the manifold divisions within the Hindu tradition, there would appear to be an overarching sense of a common identity, a denominator that has become the source of political mobilisation orchestrated by the Hindu right and Hindutva (Hinduness) forces in the diaspora (Mukta and Bhatt 2000). Yet if most Hindus are Indian, not all Indians are Hindus. Even if a ‘thin’, cultural version of Hinduism is used to describe overseas migrants of Indian origin, such an emblem is unlikely to be inclusive or satisfactory in a world where religious and political identities command powerful emotions. Moreover, there are many Indian religious

4

Gurharpal Singh

minorities within the Indian diaspora, for example Muslims and Sikhs, who constitute a signiﬁcant element of the overseas Indians in several countries. For other scholars (Barrier and Dusenbery 1989), caste rather than religion provides a more enduring marker of identity in the diaspora and symbolises diversity, locality and difference. In so far as Indians conform to the conditions of a diaspora, they do so, it is suggested, at the micro level, as segmented caste communities – a reality that is, in some cases, reproducing itself through new networks and technologies (Patel 2000). At the local level caste certainly has an important explanatory value for community narratives which are generally meaningless without the peculiarities of caste-group practices. However, whereas caste clearly captures the diversity of experience within the Indian diaspora, it is neither unchanging nor universal. In South Africa, for example, caste identities have dissolved because, amongst other reasons, their maintenance was of little value to Indian migrants, drawn as they were from the lower ranks of the caste hierarchy. A similar process is under way in Malaysia, though paradoxically the decline in the importance of caste is being explicated through caste wars. Perhaps the core feature that deﬁnes the Indian diaspora is its collective imagining of India – of emotions, links, traditions, feelings and attachments that together continue to nourish a psychological appeal among successive generations of emigrants for the ‘mother’ county. While any evaluation of these attachments is obviously fraught with difﬁculties – whether they are innate or the product of migrants’ experience in host countries of racism and xenophobia – it is palpably difﬁcult to deny the strength of feeling that they generate. Evidently, as Amitav Ghosh states, there is, as yet, no meta-text that adequately captures these collective imaginings, but it would be churlish to suggest they are incapable of fostering a powerful transnationalism that can articulate the predicament of overseas Indian communities. These new imaginings, as the contributions in this volume highlight, provide creative sites for ethnic mobilisation in Trinidad, a cultural renaissance in South Africa, a redeﬁnition of identities in Mauritius, and new departures for the votaries of Hindutva in Europe and North America (Mukta and Bhatt 2000). But in this longdistance imagining one crucial ingredient is missing: there is no underlying ‘myth of return’ to the ‘homeland’. Quite the opposite. In fact the idea of a return to India is for many overseas Indians, especially those who were trapped in the plantation economies, a haunting fear that frequently conjures up the bitter experience of emigration. Notwithstanding the limitations identiﬁed, taken together the elements of religion, caste and the collective imagining of India probably provide sufﬁcient conditions for recognising overseas communities of Indian origins as a diaspora, though one that is less bounded and cohesive than many other dispersed groups. What possibly distinguishes the Indian diaspora from its counterparts is its extreme heterogeneity, diversity and, in

Introduction

5

some cases, a persistent localism – a plurality that has led some to speak of many diasporas within the overarching India diaspora. But then this is a mere replication of the Indian social condition that also produced an equally ambiguous and modular nationalism.

Globalisation and the Indian diaspora Another common theme present in the essays in this collection is the increasing impact of globalisation in deﬁning the current dynamics of the Indian diaspora. Understood widely as a process that compresses time and space, globalisation has hastened as the result of new information technologies and economic liberalisation and, in consequence, is radically restructuring the traditional relationship between culture and economy as well as heightening a consciousness of being in the Indian diaspora. This situation contrasts remarkably with the fortunes of those who emigrated from India during the colonial era. Isolation and questions of cultural continuity epitomised their predicament. First within the colonies and then within the successor nation-states the emigrants remained separate, disenfranchised and frequently racialised. In these conditions successive generations tried to reproduce as accurately as they could the cultural ways of their forebears, while the restrictions on travel as well as the lowly economic status of most overseas Indians limited regular contacts with the ‘motherland’. After 1947 the indifference of the Nehruvian state to the plight of overseas Indians, despite the general enthusiasm with which the latter had greeted the arrival of independence, gave currency to the assumption that the future of overseas Indians lay in negotiating an equipoise with the host nation-state. Since the late 1980s the limited patterns of exchange between the various settled communities of the Indian diaspora and India have been dramatically transformed in volume and content. Cheap travel, new communications technologies and economic liberalisation have integrated these communities in ways that would have been unimaginable only a decade ago. Cultural ﬂows in real time have led to sophisticated niche consumerism with a heightened sense of consciousness of Indianness fostered by growing transnational networks and deliberate efforts to construct overarching identities. Although London, New York and Toronto are the new cosmopolitan habitats of the Indian diaspora where ostentatious consumption reﬂects high-tech aspirational life-styles, these locations remain intimately interconnected with cities in South Asia and elsewhere. In prising open previously inward-looking national economies, globalisation has created new opportunities for transnational mobility within the diaspora. In some measure the fortunes of the Indian diaspora have always been linked to the ﬂows of world trade. But what distinguishes the current context is that large and small countries like Australia and Trinidad are being compelled to respond to the demands of the global economy in ways

6

Gurharpal Singh

which make movement within the diaspora accessible and less painful. Repeated migration or temporary migration is increasing, perhaps presaging a more rootless Indian diaspora which is constantly on the move, forever in search of more promising opportunities. This kind of mobility is no longer the preserve of professionals. As Ballard points out in this volume, communities such as the Mirpuris – with no developed tradition of global commuting – are now functioning as ‘offshore communities’ engaged in complex patterns of exchange that are sustaining new ﬂows of emigration and capital formation. In sum, globalisation is gradually eroding the entry barriers that from the nineteenth century onwards caged Indian overseas communities within the territorial boundaries of the nation-state. In so doing, it is also opening up new possibilities for better integrating the diaspora.

New division of labour in the diaspora Finally, most contributors recognise that globalisation and the attendant economic restructuring of national economies are creating a new division of labour in the Indian diaspora. This change is undermining the traditional structural position of the overseas Indians as well as creating new ﬂows of labouring emigrants to countries where Indian presence was negligible. Most emigration from India in the nineteenth century comprised indentured labour to plantation economies in the Paciﬁc, Africa, the Caribbean and Australia. Subsequently, although ‘free’ migration of traders, craftsmen, ex-soldiers and businessmen supplemented the initial ﬂows, they did not substantially change the overall character of Indian settlement, which established a relatively static relationship centred around class, caste and cultural reproduction. This stability was further underpinned by the historic location of these national economies in the South of the global economy – a location that perpetuated low-income status. Occasionally exogenous or internal events (Uganda, Malaysia) disrupted the prevailing balance, but more often than not the familiar patterns were re-established, as for example in Fiji and South Africa. The relaxation in immigration controls since the 1960s in the US, Canada and Australia – especially the decision to allow more professionals – has proved to be a turning point in migration from India. While many of the earlier labour migrants (and their offspring) to the West after the Second World War are also undergoing professionalisation, it is the new arrivals from India who have added a sense of dynamism and distinctiveness to the Indian diaspora and have become its distinguishing trademark. Indian emigration to the US quadrupled between 1970 and 1996, placing India as one of the leading exporters of professional migrants. At the same time, despite the class gradation among these migrants, they are among the highest-earning ethnic groups in the US. In European Union states rising demand for professionals is creating a US-

Introduction

7

style immigration regime. But alongside the professionalisation of the Indian diaspora has come a sharper focus on class and status vis-à-vis earlier settlers. It is perhaps to be expected that these new entrants to the diaspora, reared in the global professional market place, are ready converts to values of liberal economics. But the end result of this shift is a more complex representation within the Indian diaspora, where class and status on the one hand, and the point of entry into the host state on the other, provide competing loyalties that are likely to militate against efforts to construct common interests. Paradoxically, in the new division of labour the professionalisation of the diaspora in the North is being accompanied by its continued proletarianisation in states with previously little representation of overseas Indians. Since the early 1970s oil boom, the Middle East has become the main destination for Indian labourers, who are also the principal remitters of foreign exchange to India. The size and volume of this ‘incipient diaspora’, as Prakash Jain notes in this volume, parallel the travails of indentured labourers of the nineteenth century; their Gastarbeiter status reinforces all the attendant privations. Indeed, the tenuous predicament of Indian migrant workers in the Middle East – in contrast to the more settled business communities – highlights the main dilemma of successive Indian governments towards the overseas population: the need to balance diplomatic and strategic goals with the plight of overseas Indian communities. In reﬂecting on these three themes across the collection of essays in this volume, a clear impression can be gained of the present condition of the Indian diaspora. Clearly it is not a cohesive nor an ethnic entity, marked as it is by sharp religious, linguistic, caste, geographical and host country variations. A greater sense of integration as a transnational entity might emerge from the process of integration unleashed by globalisation and the emerging division of labour. Equally these processes hold the prospects of further accentuating existing ﬁssures that have traditionally divided overseas Indian communities. What is more certain, however, is that in the new division of labour emerging in the global economy, the nation-state can no longer imprison overseas Indians in splendid isolation. In a new and dynamic phase in the world economy we are witnessing the remapping and the re-imaging of the Indian diaspora where resilience and continuity co-exist alongside new anxieties and frustrations. Whether these feelings can be tapped to make the Indian diaspora play a creative role in developing the Indian economy remains to be seen. The volume opens with Vinesh Hookoomsing’s essay on Mauritius, which explores the myth and reality of ‘Chota Bharat’ (little India) across the Indian Ocean. Mauritius has often been depicted as the ideal success story where plurality and diversity have co-existed in idyllic island harmony. While religion and language have some claim to being major symbols of ‘meta’ identities, they are not absolute markers of identity and reﬂect the

8

Gurharpal Singh

diversity and change which have been strongly inﬂuenced by the nature of the island’s economy. As a settled, plantation economy has given way to industry and, more recently, global tourism, a strong future-oriented drive can be detected. Hookoomsing offers three competing views to understand the history of Indian migrant experience in Mauritius: the ‘picturepostcard view’, the ‘insider view’, and the ‘view beyond the horizon’ – all of which co-exist in the contemporary self-image of Mauritians. Citing the Norwegian anthropologist Ericksen, Hookoomsing suggests that in the future Mauritius might resemble a post-ethnic society – where identities are mediated and negotiated in public and private markets – though currently identities of Indian origin (religion, language and caste) predominate. The history of Indians in South Africa provides an interesting counterpoint to Mauritius. The majority of migrants to South Africa were indentured labourers who were drawn disproportionately from Tamil Nadu and soon became part of the urban poor. As Alleyn Diesel explains, the traditional divisions of caste and class that accompanied overseas Indian communities were less relevant in South Africa. Most of the migrants, with the exception of Muslims and Gujaratis, were low-caste Tamils who stood to gain little from the maintenance of caste distinctions. The generally low social status of South African Indians was further consolidated by the development of the apartheid regime that lasted until the 1990s. In postapartheid South Africa, on the other hand, the assertion of ‘cultural pride’ has awakened intense interest in popular Indian culture – ﬁlms, music, fashion and Indian folk religions. The popularity of the latter, Diesel reﬂects, offers through radical reconstruction of religious rituals opportunities to overcome the psychological hubris of apartheid and personal empowerment, especially for women who have endured unremitting gender oppression. This ‘cultural renaissance’ should not be interpreted as the harbinger of more permanent links with the ‘motherland’, cautions Diesel. It is, at best, a reﬂection of internal turmoil within Indian South Africans living in a post-apartheid and globalised age. Ravindra Jain’s essay on the fortunes of Tamil plantation workers in Malaysia shares some of the sentiments of the Indian experience in South Africa. In an anthropological case study, Jain revisits the ﬁeldwork of his research almost thirty years earlier to map the changes that have occurred in the life-patterns of his earlier subjects, who were observed against the regular setting of a plantation economy in the late 1960s. Malaysia’s political transformation and industrialisation in the early 1970s have directly transformed the life chances of plantation and ex-plantation workers in ending their isolation. Moreover, Malaysia’s integration into the global economy has created more opportunities for occupational and social mobility. Naturally these transformations have been followed by disjunctures in social status, most notably caste hierarchies resulting in ‘caste wars’ among ex-plantation workers in the light of the traditional caste antipathies in India and the Sinhalese–Tamil conﬂict in Sri Lanka. But this

Introduction

9

conﬂict, Jain concludes, is an indication of the decline rather than the strength of caste endogamy among Malaysian Indians. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake’s essay also addresses the Tamil’s place in the Indian diaspora, but this time with reference to Sri Lanka. Locating herself within the post-colonial/subaltern critique of anthropology, Rajasingham-Senanayake suggests that the concept of a diaspora in South Asia has serious political and legal implications for settled communities like the Tamils because the diasporic discourse is the construction of ‘otherness’ – primarily of non-white immigrants – in majoritiarian, mono-ethnic liberal democracies in the West. In South Asian states the traditional concerns of diaspora relate primarily to minority legal and political rights – rights that are easily conﬂated in the naming of a diaspora. Arguably the whole of the Sri Lankan population, asserts Rajasingham-Senanayake, belongs to the Indian diaspora: but the construction of a majoritarian Sinhalese nationalism, predicated as it has been on the erasure of this memory and colonial engineering, forecloses this reading. Consequently Tamils in Sri Lanka might be considered as part of the great Indian or Tamil diaspora. However, such a designation is likely to be resented because of the negative implications that follow from this classiﬁcation. If Sri Lankan Tamils are keen to deny their diasporic status, the opposite is the case with Indian migrants to the Gulf states – once described by Myron Weiner as an ‘incipient diaspora’. In a comprehensive overview of three million Indians in the Gulf states, Prakash Jain draws attention to their role in the new division of labour in the Indian diaspora – as latterday indentured labourers tied by contracts and legal status as dispensable guestworkers. Most of this emigration has taken place since the oil boom of the early 1970s, though it needs to be recognised that trading communities of Indian origin have been present in these states since time immemorial, and the new migrants are mainly from villages in Kerala. The pattern of migration has begun to reﬂect more white-collar workers and professionals who have proved more adept at establishing social organisations, but the bitter experience of migrant workers in the Gulf contradicts Tagore’s aphorism that overseas Indians are part of the great Banyan Tree capable of social reproduction. Where these workers – and their white-collar and professional compatriots – come together is in the performative aspects of Indianness: that is, religious rituals and popular consumption of Indian culture packaged for a global audience. Ironically, the precariousness of Gulf migrants’ existence ensures that their bonds with India are among the most permanent of all the overseas Indian communities and at the same time least capable of inﬂuencing Indian government policy for the protection of their interests. An example of an overseas Indian community being quite successful in defending its interests is provided by N. Jayaram in an illuminating essay on Indo-Trinidadians. His point of departure is the ‘cultural renaissance’ among Indo-Trinidadians that has led to the ‘ideologicalisation’ of ethnicity

10

Gurharpal Singh

and, in turn, the political mobilisation of the community, resulting in the ﬁrst Prime Minister of Indian origin. This outcome is the culmination of an interesting dialectic between class and ethnicity on the one hand, and organised politics on the other. Having entered the Trinidanian social formation at the lowest point, for Indo-Trinidadians Indianness, or rather Hinduism in its homogenised form, has historically provided the ethnic mainspring against discrimination and the cultural pressures of creolisation. Both political independence and economic modernisation have intensiﬁed competition between Afro- and Indo-Trinidadian communities, and in these circumstances the particularistic construction of an Indian identity through cultural contestations of public space has produced remarkable political gains. Whether this strategy can be reproduced elsewhere is extremely doubtful for its roots are to be found in the Caribbean and, in particular, the majoritarian and hegemonic ambitions of a previously excluded and psychologically humiliated community of IndoTrinidadians. A far more dynamic picture of migration and changing patterns of cultural relations is presented by Carmen Voigt-Graf in her engaging essay on the Indians in the Antipodes. Firmly basing her research within the framework of globalisation, Voigt-Graf explores the differing biographies of migration of three groups of settlers – Punjabis, Indo-Fijians and Kannadigas. Punjabis have been present in Australia and New Zealand since the late nineteenth century and were part of the ‘free labour’ migration before the white-only policy was adopted. Changes in immigration policy in the 1970s and 1980s have encouraged Indo-Fijian migration because of the political instability in Fiji, professional urban migration with high-tech backgrounds from Karnataka, and more diverse entry into Australia and New Zealand by ‘twice’ and ‘thrice’ Indian migrants from Singapore, Great Britain, the Gulf states, and East Africa. There are distinct differences in the class composition of these groups, but all, to some degree, are globally mobile and part of transnational networks. The contingency of much recent migration leads Voigt-Graf to suggest that it is perhaps inappropriate to use the term Indian diaspora to capture this varied experience. Instead she proposes a three-fold classiﬁcation: Punjabis are part of a global diaspora, the IndoFijians a Paciﬁc diaspora and Kannadigas a world-city diaspora. In another revision Voigt-Graf observes that the faith in diasporic transnational networks as agents for economic development in the mother country is largely misplaced. At best these networks provide multiple forms of opportunities as well as security for new and settled migrants alike. Some of the themes explored by Voigt-Graf are further evaluated by Johanna Lessinger in her essay on Indians in the US. Challenging the popular myth that most US Indians are successful professionals, Lessinger offers a more variegated picture of class differentiation distinguished by dates of arrival and the linguistic and regional divisions. These differences, she argues, are often deliberately overlooked in the representation of a

Introduction

11

‘model community’ led by professionals who have come to symbolise Indian achievement in the US since 1965. Cultural reproduction, Lessinger observes, has been sustained by distinctive patterns of consumption, commercial enclaves, and the deliberate efforts to forge Americanised Indian identity in a land where ethnic group identiﬁcation is now seen as an advantage. It is perhaps inevitable that the US has become the main target of the Indian government’s NRI policies. But the conscious pursuit of a US NRI constituency, warns Lessinger, holds latent dangers because the attitude of Indians in the US towards India is coloured by profound ambivalence rooted in material gain – an outlook that is patently at odds with Indian national interest. At the same time the institutional policies of the Indian Government designed to entice US NRIs is creating a new class of professional elites who have become adept, with collusion from their India-based counterparts, at exploiting opportunities opened up by economic liberalisation. Remarkably, Canada offers a different story of Indian migration from that of the US. Free labour migration to Canada by Punjabis, predominantly Sikhs, began at the end of the nineteenth century, and today, despite the increase in professional migration, the social composition of early settlers still predominates. In a theoretically rich essay, Harjot Oberoi explores Ghosh’s suggestion that the key relationship between India and its diaspora lies at the site of imagination. Oberoi undertakes this task by examining the Indian experience in Canada through two texts: a novel and an autobiography. Whereas the novel explores the dilemmas of high modernity as the central character, a Punjabi migrant, grapples with the traumas of migration before ﬁnding redemption in modernism, the autobiography rejects crossing this threshold in favour of primordial attachments that are constantly renewed by prolonged periods in India. Interestingly the dilemmas of both categories of settlers – as well as many in the Indian diaspora – may ﬁnd their resolution in forms of cosmopolitanism. Lastly, Roger Ballard’s essay provides an insightful anthropological account of the development of British Asians in Great Britain. In concentrating on the need to explain the nature of transnational links with the home countries and variations in the development of Asian communities in Great Britain, Ballard pleas for a comparative approach that also embraces Bangladeshis from Syhlet and Miripuris from Pakistan alongside Punjabi migrants from the Jullunder Doaba and Gujaratis. Ballard’s main argument is that while many of the transnational links increasingly resemble ‘offshore’ companies – that are able to circumvent national regulations – structural variations in and among the different segments of the British Asian population can be attributed largely to initial skills and qualiﬁcations at emigration, structure of family and differences in marriage patterns. Ballard, like Lessinger, is cautious of the long-term sustainability of transnational links of the communities he has studied: these links, however beneﬁcial for the home country, he contends, cannot be taken for granted, and require considerable thought and forward planning if they are to be sustained.

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Gurharpal Singh

The essays presented in this volume reﬂect the growing depth and range of contemporary scholarship on the Indian diaspora across disciplinary boundaries. Taken together they dramatically highlight the dynamic conditions within which the Indian diaspora of today is located and the increasingly complex relationship between culture and economy. Few can disagree with the assertion that the signiﬁcance of the Indian diaspora will increase within ‘host’ countries and in its relationship with India. Yet making sense of this development is a major challenge for academics and public policy analysts. This volume is being offered in the hope that it will contribute to such an understanding.

References and further reading Barrier, N. G. and V. A. Dusenbery, eds (1989) The Sikh Disapora: Migration and the Experience Beyond the Punjab, Delhi: Chanakya Publications. Cohen, R. (1997) Global Diasporas: An Introduction, London: UCL Press. Mukta, P. and C. Bhatt, eds (2000) Special issue on ‘Hindutva Movement in the West: Resurgent Hinduism and the Politics of the Diaspora’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 32(3). Parekh, B. (1993) ‘Some Reﬂections on the Indian Diaspora’, Journal of Contemporary Thought 3: 105–51. Patel, P. (2000) ‘Transnational Linkages between India and Britain: An Exploration of Socio-Economic ties between Paidars of Central Gujarat and Greater London’, unpublished paper presented at the conference on ‘Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora’, Indian International Centre, New Delhi, 8–10 April. Tatla, D. S. (1999) The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood, London: UCL Press. Vertovec, S. (2000) The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns, London: Routledge.

Chapter Title

1

13

Chota Bharat, Mauritius The myth and the reality Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing

Preamble For its ﬁrst new millennium independence celebrations, Mauritius chose the Prime Minister of India as its state guest. Atal Bihari Vajpayee did not pull mass crowds, as did his more charismatic predecessors, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, but his visit was packed with emotion and a strong sense of achievement. A rare moment of intense feeling showed the Indian Prime Minister in meditative mood under an ebony tree, with the Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam by his side. In 1978, that tree was just a small plant that Vajpayee had sown in the famed botanical Garden of Pamplemousses, a magniﬁcent living legacy of the French period. Mauritius was then known as Isle de France, the Island of France. At that time Vajpayee was Minister of External Affairs and was on an ofﬁcial visit as head of the Indian delegation attending the tenth independence celebrations of Mauritius. Young Navin Ramgoolam was thousands of miles away studying medicine in Dublin. But his father was there, by the side of Vajpayee: Sir Seewoosagur (SSR), Prime Minister, Father of the Nation and symbol of Indo-Mauritian advancement, praised by his Indian guest as the ‘enlightened leader’. The year before, in November 1977, Vajpayee had inaugurated an international seminar at the Delhi India International Centre on ‘The Other India: The Overseas Indians and their relationship with India’. In his inaugural address, he referred to the overseas Indians as ‘our sons and daughters’: ‘Though our sons and daughters have gone abroad to work or reside there, India will never disown them or fail to appreciate and respect their essential loyalty to the culture and heritage of the mother country’ (Bahadursingh 1979: 30). Vajpayee was back again in Mauritius in 1995, this time as India’s Leader of the Opposition. In the meantime, Mauritius had undergone a sea-change: SSR had been swept from power, and it was Sir Anerood Jugnauth, the new Prime Minister since the elections of 1982, who played the host to Vajpayee. Navin Ramgoolam was back from Dublin, and on his father’s death he had taken over the reins of the Labour Party. Like Vajpayee, he too was at that time Leader of the Opposition, and both were biding time.

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Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing

Navin Ramgoolam’s Western style – the result of more than ﬁfteen years spent in Britain – and his lack of command of either Hindi or Bhojpuri made him prone to being culturally incorrect. And Vajpayee’s gentle reproach of Ramgoolam appeared to Jugnauth as a blessing, the latter being convinced that his own language mastery gave him cultural legitimacy and a clear advantage over his young challenger. Some months later, the Mauritian Supreme Court rendered a judgement against the Oriental languages as subjects to be considered for ranking at the highly competitive Certiﬁcate of Primary Education examinations. Angered by the verdict, a crowd of Indian language partisans staged an impressive demonstration at the airport on Jugnauth’s return from a visit to India. Carried off his feet and sense of judgement, the latter dissolved the National Assembly, used the Indian languages as a key election issue, and lost. During the new millenium independence celebrations, Navin Ramgoolam articulated one or two sentences in Hindi in his speeches, an effort that Vajpayee was certainly pleased to acknowledge. Mauritius was also preparing to celebrate the birth centenary of SSR by having it coincide with new general elections in September 2000.1 And the ebony tree that Atal Bihari Vajpayee had sown in Mauritian soil twenty-two years earlier was already blooming with ﬂowers and fruits. The ﬂowers were the Indira Gandhi Cultural Centre, an architectural work of art that he inaugurated, and the projected Rabindranath Tagore Institute, whose foundation stone he laid and cemented with words of ekta (sense of unity) addressed to the Mauritian people. And the fruits consisted of a line of credit totalling US$9 million, an agreement for cooperation in information technology, and a memorandum of understanding in the ﬁeld of ocean science and technology. There was also a trade agreement that would operate through a joint committee to strengthen bilateral relations and work out strategies for trade negotiations at regional and multilateral levels. Culture coupled with economy creates a strong and lasting synergy between the two partners, particularly when the beneﬁts are mutually gratifying. Vajpayee’s inaugural address at the 1977 seminar on ‘The Other India’ was not conﬁned to the cultural dimension only. The lofty words quoted earlier in praise of the children of overseas India were a prelude to more down-to-earth considerations: There is a great deal which can be done by the Indian community abroad to promote Indian industry, science and technology. They could be commission agents or retailers of consumer goods. As India has the unique experience of a rapid transition into the industrial age, it should be possible for the Indian communities abroad to act as links in the transfer of appropriate technology from India to other countries. There are several distinguished Indians overseas who have the

Chota Bharat, Mauritius

15

experience of several generations in international trends and industry. They could help forge new partnerships and arrange joint ventures in these countries by importing Indian capital and expertise with local resources. (Bahadursingh 1979: 31) A few years later, in 1982, India and Mauritius signed the Avoidance of Double Taxation Agreement. Foreign investors took advantage of it by opening offshore companies in Mauritius and investing in India through Mauritius. As a result of this, according to a document released by the Indian High Commission in March 2000, Mauritius now ranks among the largest foreign investors in India. For its part, India is the third largest exporter to Mauritius after France and South Africa, and accounts for 8 to 9 per cent of the total Mauritian imports. There are at present thirty-two India–Mauritius joint ventures, nine of which are already operational. These include Ajanta Pharma Mauritius Ltd, Asian Paints, Arvind Overseas Ltd (denim fabrics), Crains Technologies (assembly of computers), and Pentafour International Mauritius Ltd (software development and information technology consulting). Indian Oil too is getting ready to enter the Mauritian market following the agreement signed during Vajpayee’s latest visit. Last but not least, Thomas Cook India has already landed in Mauritius with the declared aim of leading the foreign currency operations sector on the island. Commenting on the cultural and economic links with India, Somduth Bhuckory states in his paper presented at the 1977 seminar: ‘Indians of Mauritius are fully conscious of the debt to India, hence the reference to Mauritius as a Little India beyond the seas’. He is actually referring to himself here, for he wrote a poem on that theme in 1967, entitled Mauritius ki Shristi (The creation of Mauritius). The following extract, quoted from the English version, aptly summarises the idealised vision of Mauritius, a little India (Chota Bharat) beyond the seas: It has come from beyond the waves From a world of dreams, From the lap of the Himalayas, From the ﬂow of the Ganges. The prisoner that Mother India was Had quite a miserable fate: She had no wedding bangles in her arms But had chains in her ankles. The trials and tribulations of evil days Broke her heart into pieces And to this side came ﬂoating A piece of that heart.

16

Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing And by a decree of Fate It began to change day by day And in a course of time became A little India beyond the seas. (Bhuckory 1988: 114–15)

‘Chota Bharat, Mauritius’ is in fact a recurrent theme that goes back to the turn of the twentieth century, a theme from which the emerging Hindu elite churned a myth, later an ideology, and now perhaps a post-ethnic reality.

Chota Bharat: the historical background To the Indian coolies who crossed the dark waters of the ocean in the early 1830s, the place where they landed was Mirish desh. It symbolised a land of plenty and of quick fortune, or more realistically a hope of escape from a miserable life, a place where they could ﬁnd work, not necessarily settle down, but earn and save enough money to go back home and improve the lot of their kith and kin. To the Mauritian planter, the Indian coolie was just a ‘muscles and sinews’ substitute to the newly liberated African in the cane ﬁeld. There was very little room for human consideration in the post-abolition encounter between the French landowner and the Indian labourer. The cane ﬁelds ﬂourished and ﬁlled the ships with sugar destined for Europe. But in the same process, small villages gradually replaced the old plantation camps of misery; shrines, temples and mosques emerged in the relief of the local landscape; and the coolie variant, Mirish desh, gave way to the Creole native name of the island. The Indian progressively adopted the land and became part of it. But he continued to be perceived as the alien, even though, or perhaps because, he became overnight numerically the dominant group. Already in 1871, twothirds of the population of Mauritius was of Indian origin; and the Indian ports of labour embarkation became part of Mauritian Creole lexical usage to distinguish between and designate the Bombay, Madras and Calcutta Indian. Among the Indians themselves the Hindu–Muslim divide replicated the subcontinental distinction, with some degree of context-based adjustment. Furthermore, northern Hindus continued to be perceived at popular level as endyen (Indian), and southern Hindus as Tamils and Telugus. In an attempt to avoid fragmentation of the Hindu as a generic group reference representing 52 per cent of the population, current ofﬁcial practice has recourse to language as a speciﬁc marker to refer to Hindispeaking, Tamil-speaking, Telugu-speaking and Marathi-speaking Hindus. Among the Muslims, linguistic and regional features function mainly as markers of social and professional class distinction. The small group of merchants and traders who settled on the island during the nineteenth

Chota Bharat, Mauritius

17

century originate from Gujrat and form a strong business elite. The language distinction – Gujrati for the Muslim merchant and Bhojpuri for the Muslim coolie – is no longer signiﬁcant since both languages have largely been replaced by Urdu and Arabic as common languages of Islamic reference. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Gujrati merchants and businessmen functioned as the Indian elite on the island. In 1901, when Mohandas K. Gandhi made a brief stop in Mauritius on his way from South Africa to India, he was welcomed and celebrated by them in the name of the Indian community. Local press reports of the reception given to him during his brief stay list the presence of some Tamils among the predominantly Muslim audience. The role and contribution of the Muslim merchants and Tamil traders is highlighted in the Mauritius Illustrated, a glossy 450-page business reference handbook of facts, ﬁgures and personalities of Mauritius ﬁrst published in 1914: ‘The Mohammedans, erroneously termed Arabs, are undoubtedly the most picturesque section of the business community of Port Louis, and the inﬂuence they are exerting in local commerce is very considerable and continually increasing’ (Macmillan 1991: 406). The ‘Madrassee Hindoos’ are presented in the following terms: The extensive interests which the Hindoos have obtained in Mauritius and the inﬂuence they are exerting on its commerce are very noteworthy. Probably the largest local business owned and operated by men from the great land of India is that of Messrs. Canabady and Co, which has contributed to the welfare of the island’s export sugar trade for about sixty years. (Macmillan 1991: 390) No northern Hindu name is listed in the publication, which would imply that at the beginning of the twentieth century no notable ﬁgure from the large Bihari group had yet emerged as part of the world of business and trade. Made up of labourers and small planters, the group did nevertheless constitute the power base of the slow but steady rise to political power of a new, mainly intellectual and professional Indian elite from the 1930s, culminating with the accession to independence in 1968. The impact of India’s independence and partition and the perspective of independent Mauritius being dominated by the Northern Hindu majority created a typical divide-and-rule situation that triggered a successful call for separate identity among the Muslims especially. The idea of a common Indo-Mauritian identity was abandoned and the new independence constitution acknowledged the existence of two distinct ethnic groups based on religion: the Hindus and the Muslims. There still remained a close Indian language and culture link through the Hindi–Urdu– Hindustani connection, but that too was increasingly undermined by the growing attraction exerted from the 1970s by the Arab world. A glaring

18

Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing

illustration of this is given in the language returns for the 1983 Census, when for the ﬁrst time informants were allowed to include the language of their choice. Arabic, which was not till then on the Census list, obtained a higher score than Urdu as the ancestral language of the Mauritian Muslims. In a similar vein, there emerged among the Tamils a desire for a distinct identity nourished by a number of factors. Apart from the age-old northsouth divide inherited from the subcontinent, there was the feeling that their people – at least some of them – were among the ﬁrst inhabitants of the island. They were present almost from the beginning of the French period in the eighteenth century, and they set the ﬁrst imprints of Indian presence in terms of language, culture and religion. But more seriously, there was the persistent perception that the Tamil contribution to the Mauritian Indian heritage and to the social development of the country in general was not given due recognition. Then all of a sudden, all these factors converged and condensed into a collective deep-seated sense of insult added to injustice, triggered by what seemed at ﬁrst a trivial event. In 1998, the Bank of Mauritius issued a series of banknotes which, apart from the illustrations, were identical to the old notes in all respects except one: the old established order in which the language inscriptions appeared on the notes – English, Tamil and Hindi – had been reversed in the case of the latter two languages. This was interpreted as a deliberate manipulation in an attempt to downgrade the Tamil language and heritage. It unleashed an unprecedented show of anger expressed by mass demonstrations which forced the government to sack the Director and Deputy Director of the Bank of Mauritius, remove the new notes from circulation and print fresh ones with the language inscriptions reset in the original order, at the cost of some Mauritian Rs60 million (approx. US$2 million). To understand more fully the historical context of this process of Hindu– Muslim fragmentation on the one hand, and of Tamil self-assertion on the other, it is important to underline that the idea(l) of Chota Bharat was ﬁrst evoked in the 1920s by the emerging ‘Hindi-speaking’ Hindu elite in reaction to the old established Franco-Mauritian colonial elite’s view of Mauritius as Little France. In 1935, the centenary of the beginning of Indian immigration was celebrated by members of this elite, thereby setting a clear demarcation line between the arrival of the post-abolition Indian diaspora originating mainly from Bihar, and the presence of Indians who had come much earlier, and mainly from the French comptoirs in south India. Later on, taking advantage of the new regional and international context of colonial contestation, this same elite took the lead of the movement for constitutional change in the colony. A new constitution came into force in 1947, which enlarged the voting qualiﬁcations to include among other things literacy in the Indian languages listed in the Census in Mauritius.

Chota Bharat, Mauritius

19

The number of Indian voters increased dramatically, so much so that when elections were held the year after, the result was a landmark victory for the new Hindu elite. It marked the beginning of a new era with political power shifting into the hands of the Hindu majority and economic power resting with the Franco-Mauritian minority. For the Muslim minority, the 1948 elections came as a shock since none of its candidates was elected, and the future meant a separate platform and the need for a strategy of political and economic alliances. The election of one Tamil candidate was also a signal for the adoption of minority survival politics by the group. The trend was thus set for the elaboration of a complex game of ethno-politics that has shaped the course of the history of modern Mauritius through independence and into the twenty-ﬁrst century. Viewed against this background of ethnic evolution from Indian to Hindu and Muslim separate identities, with the further perspective of a potential Hindu fragmentation to make room for a Tamil entity, the idea(l) of Chota Bharat evokes a familiar reality of perpetuating the religious and provincial divisions inherited from the subcontinent. But viewed from within the ‘Hindi-speaking’ Hindu perspective, Chota Bharat appears more like an ideological construct symbolising a diasporic reconstitution of and relation to the idealised ancestral motherland.

Mauritius Among the Indian diaspora scattered over the world, the Indo-Mauritians – to use the more appropriate current appellation – offer a shining proﬁle of what looks like the most successful overseas Indian community. Hindus and Muslims together, they represent more than two-thirds of the population of Mauritius, a demographic reality which is by itself of considerable weight given the size of the overall population (just over a million) and of the island (only 720 square miles). They have played a key role in the reshaping of the social, cultural and political life of Modern Mauritius, and have provided political leadership ever since the emergence of the new elite in the 1930s. India, the ancestral motherland, is not very far away, and the same Indian Ocean washes the shores of the subcontinent and the island. Mauritius thus seems to possess all the necessary ingredients that would make it look like an ideal reference within the Indian diaspora. To what extent this may be truly the case is no doubt a matter of opinion. But the signs of the Indo-Mauritian ‘miracle’ – to use a much-quoted cliché when referring to the current economic success of Mauritius – are very visible, so much so that one is tempted to go beyond appearances. After all they may be deceptive! This is precisely what I will attempt to do by adopting a three-fold perspective conveniently offered by the fact that Mauritius is an island, namely:

20 • • •

Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing The view from the ‘seaside’: the ‘post-card’ image depicting the colourful presence of India in Mauritius. The view from the inside: a problem-based approach to what it means to be a Mauritian of Indian origin in a plural society. The view beyond the horizon: the challenge of modernity and globalisation, and therefore the meaning to be given to such constructs as heritage, culture, language and identity.

The view from the seaside or the post-card perspective This is the outsider’s perspective. Light, exotic and gently superﬁcial, it highlights the Indianness of Mauritius: shivalas, shrines and mosques all over the island; women in sarees, salwar kameez and dazzling jewellery; ﬁlm songs on radio, television and videos; shops, markets and bazaars displaying oriental goods and styles; festivals and rituals celebrated all the year round. The tourist and visitor is irresistibly attracted by the tropicalised oriental ﬂavour of Mauritius. That is probably what the taste was like in the ‘good old colonial days’, during which the Indian presence added colour, variety and spice to the otherwise black and white landscape. Mauritian literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is full of folk stereotypes depicting the Indian labourer, cake-seller, milkman, gardener and cartdriver. They were not real ﬂesh and blood characters, just part of the scenery, ﬁgures that were born from the ‘natural’ order of things and were meant to validate the power and permanence of the French-dominated way of life. But already at the turn of the century, there were signs that the place of the Indian within Mauritian society was not ﬁxed for eternity. New ﬁgures were emerging, reﬂected in the shift in literature from the harmless folk ﬁgure to that of the sensuous Indian woman, a symbol of temptation and of menace to the white society and civilisation. Indeed, what the writers and novelists of the 1930s feared the most was the Indianisation of the island. Were they alive today, they would no doubt conclude their worst fears have come true. To the casual observer, contemporary Mauritius may have an air of Little India, not only in its social, cultural and human landscape, but especially in its political and administrative set up: Indo-Mauritians are indeed very much visible in the public sector where they tend to hold key ofﬁces – a situation which often generates a feeling of ‘malaise’ within the complex ethnic set-up of the society. This French word, meaning a fuzzy feeling of discomfort, has developed a typically local signiﬁcance to express a mixture of socio-ethnic ill-feeling, frustration and resentment. Indo-Mauritians also tend to dominate the political power structure based on a Westminster type of constitution which concentrates power into the hands of the Prime Minister. By tacit convention, largely inspired from the unwritten acceptance of ethnic majority rule, it has been taken for

Chota Bharat, Mauritius

21

granted by one and all that the latter is a Hindu and among the Hindus themselves that he should be a Vaish.2 Taken together, the various facets of the Indo-Mauritian make-up tend to show a high proﬁle and thus conﬁrm the impression of an overwhelming presence. But this may be just a perception, a construed reality or, to put it more crudely, a myth perpetuated for the sake of appearance. The postcard image. Let us therefore have a look at the other side of the picture, towards those bittersweet sugar cane ﬁelds. The view from inside It is in those ﬁelds that the story started: from slavery to indenture, to independence and to present-day development within the global liberal economic system. The viewpoint from which I will attempt to unfold the perspective from within is 1935, the centenary celebrations of the arrival of Indian immigrants to Mauritius. It was not by any account a massive event in terms of popular involvement, nor was it very inspiring in terms of content and commitment. Hazareesingh (1950: 185), who was actively involved in its organisation, wrote later: ‘In India, Congress took no direct interest in the matter; and Mahatma Gandhi did not approve of the idea. In his view a century of suffering needed no special remembrance.’ Tagore sent a message for the occasion and the Indian Colonial Society of Madras sent a delegate. But the celebrations had important symbolic signiﬁcance in the sense that they mark the beginning of a form of Indian nationalism in Mauritius. I will call it the ‘elite form’ on the following grounds: • • •

•

The organisers were Indo-Mauritian intellectuals and professionals, some of whom had freshly come back from British universities. All the speeches made on that occasion were in English. A historical account of the Indians in Mauritius, the ﬁrst of its kind, was published on that occasion. It was written in French by an IndoMauritian. No reference was made to the abolition of slavery, which actually led to the beginning of Indian immigration.

The elite nature of the emerging Indian nationalism in Mauritius is clearly illustrated by its desire to collaborate not only with the colonial power but also with the Franco-Mauritian bourgeoisie, which controlled the Mauritian economy and society. Collaboration and compromise as practised by the Indo-Mauritian elite from the 1930s onward shaped the mode of integration of the Indo-Mauritian community at large. This sounds like a sweeping statement that could imply that there was no attempt at developing Indian nationalism at mass level, no form of popular conﬂict and resistance. This was not so. In contrast to the elitist

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approach, the 1940s witnessed the emergence of a mass Indian nationalist movement whose leaders had spent their study years in India and were inspired by the philosophy and ideals of the Mahatma, and also of Subhash Chandra Bose. Indeed, a more correct assessment of that crucial period would no doubt show that both the elite perspective of compromise and collaboration and the mass movement of confrontation and resistance were present and vied with each other for political expression and leadership control of the Mauritian Indian group. However, in the particular colonial set up of Mauritius – a plantation society created and dominated from its origin by the Franco-Mauritian bourgeoisie – the Western-trained elite’s message and approach was far more acceptable. And it got through. From then on, the whole destiny of the Indo-Mauritian community – cultural, social, economic and political – was shaped and controlled to a large extent by its collaborative elite. The power structure within the society at large thus remained unchallenged and the transfer of state power from the metropolis to the IndoMauritian elite was done smoothly, as a result of which political independence was achieved without mass anti-colonial struggle. The maintenance of the post-colonial status quo has had in my view farreaching consequences within the Indo-Mauritian community. For one thing, the latter tended to look towards the state – controlled by its elite – for the maintenance of its values and interests. Instead of reinforcing and extending its internal networking through dynamic community-based structures and organisations, it tended to sit back and look towards the state for resources and institutional backup. With political independence and the emergence of Mauritian nationalism as a counter-force, state-sponsored community values and interests – promoted under the policy of unity in diversity – had little appeal to the rebellious young generation of the 1970s. The solidarity of class, people and nation carried more weight than the sense of ethnic belonging. The concept of ‘Mauritianism’, or Mauritian nationalism, became more relevant than the ofﬁcial policy recognising ethnic diversity and promoting cultural pluralism. There was thus a kind of divorce between the state and the society at large, and particularly between the Indo-Mauritian elite and the masses it was supposed to be connected to. But I believe there was more to it than just the independence factor. I will offer the following explanatory points for consideration: •

•

The relation between state and community values and interests: statebased or state-sponsored mechanisms are by their very nature clogged down with bureaucracy and red-tapism. They are therefore not very appropriate for cultural dynamism and development. These mechanisms are Western-inspired and they function according to norms of procedure and accountability which apply to all and therefore cannot be easily manipulated.

Chota Bharat, Mauritius •

•

23

With the democratisation and spread of education, school values have tended to supersede home values. These school-based values generally correspond to Western norms and patterns. Their impact on the IndoMauritian’s value system has yet to be determined, but it may be safely assumed that the traditional home values have been gradually loosing their grip. Economic development and social mobility have resulted in the development of an increasingly urbanised Indo-Mauritian middle class within which class values and life-styles are typically more important than the traditional community values.

Beyond the horizon: what perspective? The middle-class trend was accelerated in the 1980s, when industrialisation swept the whole country away in the typical spirit of liberalism and market economy. Viewed against this background, the Indo-Mauritian destiny seems trapped between the state and the market. In the 1970s, the elite used state leverage in its attempt to engineer the destiny of the group. But it appears to have achieved limited success, largely because of its own limitations as a Western-oriented collaborative elite. In the 1980s, riding the new wave of market economy and liberalism, a new ﬁgure emerged: the business entrepreneur. But the Indo-Mauritian entrepreneur’s share of the market remained, and is still, very limited. In fact, Mauritius is gradually moving into an ‘open’ society, which is the price to pay for successful modernisation under a liberal economic development programme. In its way towards the ‘open’ society, it is being progressively integrated into the Western-dominated global network that has little or no consideration for differences and peculiarities. The state too no longer protects. Actually, it is using its power – sometimes forcefully, as in the late 1980s and early 1990s – to smooth out obstacles and facilitate integration into the global world. To what extent then is the concept of pluralism valid and signiﬁcant within the perspective of globalisation? The issue has been raised by the Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Eriksen. With Trinidad and Mauritius in mind, he questions the continued relevance of pluralism as a label applied to these two societies, and offers an alternative explanation which points to what he calls the development of the post-ethnic society. Referring to the kind of ‘cultural pluralism’ speciﬁc to Mauritius, Eriksen (1993: 91) argues that it is gradually becoming a form of ‘plurality in life-worlds endemic to modernity’. According to him: This implies, by deﬁnition, a form of ‘unity in diversity’ in so far as everybody is a citizen. Systematic communication of cultural difference tends to be mediated by the state and its agencies, the market and/or the mass media, which are the unifying, reﬂexive interfaces of modernity.

24

Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing

Ethnicity, says Eriksen (1993: 90), is changing in meaning and signiﬁcance as Mauritian society is changing. It is being replaced not necessarily by nationalism but by aspects of modern individualism associated with industrial capitalism and the capitalist world market. There are signs that we are heading towards the commodity society, but I am not sure whether this would imply, as Eriksen believes (1993: 185), the existence of a ‘ ‘‘cultural market” where beliefs and practices may be changed as easily as one changes one’s shirt’. Language and identity: a changing landscape To illustrate my point, I will refer to the relative signiﬁcance of two important symbols of Indo-Mauritian identity: religion and language. In the case of religion, which is a more fundamental marker, a comparison of the postindependence Census ﬁgures of 1972, 1983 and 1990 shows a remarkable stability which clearly disproves the alarmist echoes of massive conversion that we hear from time to time (see Table 1.1). In contrast, the picture that comes out of the same Census returns for Indian languages shows signiﬁcant changes. Before referring to them, let me explain brieﬂy the socio-linguistic categories used in the Census. Until the 1990 Census, the normal practice was to distinguish between ‘language of forefathers’, that is ancestral languages (AL), and ‘language currently spoken’ at home (CL). Actual competence in and use of AL are not considered important because AL’s main function is to identify the ‘linguistic group’ to which respondents belong. In 1972 they could only choose one AL from the pre-established list with which they were presented and which did not include Bhojpuri or Arabic, for instance. In 1983, there was no pre-established list and respondents were free to choose their AL. Table 1.1 Religion 1972

1983

1990

Total population

826,199

966,863

1,022,456

Hinduism

421,707 (51.04%)

506,486 (52.38%)

534,932 (52.32%)

Islam

136,997 (16.58%)

160,130 (16.56%)

171,863 (16.81%)

Christianity

258,411 (31.38%)

290,380 (30.03%)

308,644 (30.19%)

Chinese

5,701 (0.69%)

4.598 (0.48%)

3,611 (0.35%)

Other/not speciﬁed

3.383 (0.41%)

5,269 (0.54%)

3,406 (0.33%)

Source: Mauritius Census Publication.

Chota Bharat, Mauritius

25

Furthermore, an introductory Census note extended the status of language (already accorded to Creole) to Bhojpuri also. It must also be pointed out that one fundamental question that used to be present in the previous Censuses was removed from the 1983 Census, namely the ethnic community to which one belongs. Consequently, ethnicity was determined by religion and ancestral language only. The 1990 Census brought some additional and more radical changes. First, it gave the respondent the possibility of listing two AL (or CL) on the basis of maternal/paternal distinction. This clearly represents a far-reaching innovation, for the recognition of ancestral bilingualism means that the concept of ‘linguistic group’ established on the ‘one AL’ criterion may now be questioned. For the time being, the Census-based bilingual population, whether ancestral or current, counts for about 11 per cent of the total population, which represents a sizeable group though still too small to signiﬁcantly upset the overall picture. But then ﬁgures, especially Census ﬁgures, are not very meaningful per se. Their importance lies rather in the trends and patterns that they indicate.3 Another innovation in the 1990 Census was the re-introduction of the literacy language (LL) category – ‘languages read and written’ – which existed in the 1952 Census but was dropped thereafter. There is no simple or standard deﬁnition of literacy competence. The one used in the Census deﬁnes literacy language as one in which ‘the person can, with understanding, both read and write a simple statement in his or her everyday life’. The socio-linguistic landscape that emerges from the juxtaposition of the three language categories (AL, CL, LL) is rich and revealing, especially when we look at it from the perspective of the Indian languages. In the tables that follow, I have included Creole for the sake of reference and comparison. It is the major common language of Mauritius and its constant gain of speakers reﬂects and accounts for the losses continuously suffered by the Indian languages. A cursory examination of the data in Table 1.2 indicates a steady decline of the standard Indian languages. Hindi, for example, has been almost totally displaced by Bhojpuri as AL and CL. This no doubt reﬂects historical and socio-linguistic truth, but it also illustrates a very signiﬁcant change in language attitude. Bhojpuri was traditionally looked down upon as the low language, with Hindi fulﬁlling all the functions of the high language. Hindi is no doubt still the prestige language of reference, but the very existence of Bhojpuri as well as its role and relevance have been forcefully emphasised. (There is actually a close parallel between the Hindi–Bhojpuri and the French–Creole diglossic pairs in Mauritius. The latter has undergone considerable re-adjustment since the 1970s and it has also to a large extent set the trend for Hindi–Bhojpuri re-adjustment in the 1980s.) The Hindi–Bhojpuri shift may also be attributed to what I would call the impact of modernity. Hindi and the values associated with it used to be

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Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing

Table 1.2 Evolution of ancestral language (AL) and current language (CL), 1972–90 Total population

1972 826,199

1983 966,863

1990 1,022,456

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

Creole

AL CL

272,975 428,427

33.00 51.80

280,377 521,950

29.00 54.00

345,802 618,226

33.80 60.50

Hindi

AL CL

320,881 262,191

38.80 31.80

208,450 111,134

21.60 11.50

38,142 12,845

3.70 12.00

Bhojpuri

AL CL

– –

180,983 147,050

18.70 20.40

343,798 201,616

33.60 19.70

Urdu

AL CL

17,668 23,470

55,347 23,572

5.70 2.40

45,274 6,804

4.40 0.70

Arabic

AL CL

– –

68,033 1,813

7.00 0.20

1,686 280

0.20 0.030

Tamil

AL CL

56,757 29,094

6.90 3.50

66,154 35,646

6.80 3.70

47,946 8,002

4.70 0.80

Telegu

AL CL

24,233 17,634

2.90 2.10

25,619 15,364

2.70 1.60

21,027 6,437

2.05 0.60

Marathi

AL CL

16,553 12,036

2.00 1.50

20,412 12,420

2.10 1.30

17,730 7,535

1.70 0.70

Gujrati

AL CL

2,028 403

0.20 0.050

1,707 531

0.20 0.050

2,181 290

0.20 0.030

8.70 2.80

Source: Mauritius Census Publication.

acquired through the traditional community network of baithkas (community centres) and socio-cultural associations. Now it is taught in the formal context of the modern school. The baithkas no longer exist or function as such. Hindi has almost completely lost its status of a traditional ancestral language – a function now performed by Bhojpuri – but the loss has been compensated by its newly acquired status of literacy language, to which I will refer later. The same observation would apply to Urdu, the second major standard Indian language of Mauritius, except that in the case of Urdu there has been a more dramatic change. Traditionally the main reference language of the Indo-Mauritian Muslims, Urdu was displaced by Arabic in the 1983 Census, a phenomenon which can only be understood by reference to the geopolitical context which was then prevailing in the world, more particularly in the Middle East. This explanation is conﬁrmed by the virtual disappearance of Arabic in the 1990 returns, but then Urdu too keeps a very low proﬁle. Since the Muslim population of Mauritius has not diminished, one is tempted to conclude that the concept of ancestral language is no longer applicable to it and that the language traditionally associated with Islam in Mauritius no longer functions as a marker of ethnic identity.

Chota Bharat, Mauritius

27

In the case of the minor standard Indian languages – Tamil, Telegu, Marathi (I will not consider Gujrathi, which has now become a largely residual language of reference) – the trend already observed seems to indicate a sharp decline between 1983 and 1990. A possible explanation points towards a shift in favour of Creole, or bilingualism with Creole, but not Bhojpuri, in spite of the latter’s historical and cultural claim as a link language among Indo-Mauritians during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As could be expected, the Bhojpuri–Hindi pair is dominant in Table 1.3. Similarly the Bhojpuri–Urdu ancestral pair reﬂects a historical/cultural connection. But a comparison with Table 1.4 reveals a striking feature: it is Creole, rather that Bhojpuri, which emerges as the common component of any bilingual combination with an Indian language. More surprisingly, this applies not only to current but even to ancestral bilingualism. Once again, it is not the ﬁgures as such that count but the pattern that they reveal. The old shift from Bhojpuri to Creole is thus conﬁrmed by the pattern of bilingual AL and CL combinations. Does this phenomenon reﬂect an internal evolution within the Indo-Mauritian community? If so it would explain to some extent the losses observed earlier. Or is it a reﬂection of the bilingualism inherent to at least part of the mixed family context of Table 1.3 Bilingualism: Bhojpuri and another Indian language

Bhoj+Hindi Bhoj+Urdu Bhoj+Tam-Tel-Mar Bhoj+other Indian language Total

Ancestral bilingualism

Current bilingualism

No.

%

No.

%

0,000 3,553 1,366 163 37,999

0.0 0.3 0.1

000 603 351 23 21,953

0.00 0.06 0.03

3.6

2.09

Source: 1990 Census Report.

Table 1.4 Bilingualism: Creole and an Indian language

Creole+Hindi Creole+Bhoj Creole+Urdu Creole+Tamil Creole+Telegu Creole+Marathi Creole+other Indian language Total Source: 1990 Census Report.

Ancestral bilingualism

Current bilingualism

No.

%

No.

2,281 34,356 10,116 5,981 1,163 1,088 1,207 56,192

0.2 3.4 1.0 0.6 0.1 0.1 0.1 5.5

3,426 48,574 6,478 5,312 1,797 1,779 1,701 69,067

% 0.3 4.7 0.6 0.5 0.2 0.2 0.2 6.8

28

Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing

Mauritius? Whatever the explanation, the ancestral bilingual concept, if it is maintained in the next Census, should have a signiﬁcant bearing on the reshaping of the linguistic and cultural landscape. For one thing, it will affect the traditional role and function of Indian languages in Mauritius. Already, with the growing impact of the school and the media, the community-based mode of acquisition and transmission of standard Indian languages has virtually disappeared. Literacy in Indian languages only means traditional literacy acquired through non-formal modes and within the community. It belongs to the past. Literacy now means the school and the learning of English and French. The Indian languages are also present in the school, but they have to be connected to the European languages (see Table 1.5). In other words, the school and the European languages are henceforth crucial to the maintenance of the Indian languages. This fact is highlighted in the recommendations of the Select Committee on Oriental Languages set up by the government in 1991. In line with these recommendations, the Oriental languages – that is, Indian, Arabic and Chinese languages – should have counted, as from 1995, for the ranking of pupils taking the terminal primary examinations and their selection to the high-performing secondary schools. But following an adverse Supreme Court judgement, and a subsequent reversal of this judgement by the British Privy Council (the ultimate appeals court in the Mauritian legal and judiciary system), these recommendations should in principle be implemented as from 2001.4 While being a historical landmark in the promotion of Indian languages within the school system, these recommendations also emphasise the importance of the European languages and the need to master them. According to the report, the formula proposed ‘will maintain the importance of the two other important languages, i.e. English and French, which along with Mathematics will remain compulsory. In other words, the student offering an Oriental language should necessarily pass in English and French to qualify for ranking purposes.’

Table 1.5 Literacy: languages read and written

Total population (aged 12 and over) Oriental languages* European languages European and Oriental languages Creole Bhojpuri Creole and Bhojpuri None Note: *Oriental languages=Indian, Arabic, Chinese. Source: 1990 Census Report.

No.

%

785,063 24,257 409,396 169,723 28,632 2,938 4,138 144,762

100.0 3.1 52.1 21.6 3.6 0.4 0.5 18.4

Chota Bharat, Mauritius

29

Conclusion Religion and language are the most tangible markers of cultural identity. But, like all other cultural attributes, they are not absolute symbols. This may not always apply to religion, which is characterised by a greater degree of permanence and stability. In the case of language, however, its signiﬁcance and value are very often inﬂuenced by social, economic and political factors. I have argued that our traditional language beliefs and categories no longer have the same content and meaning as we move into modernity. The inclusion of new and additional language information in the latest population Census could indicate that a point has been reached which requires that the society takes stock of the changes taking place within it as it moves ahead. Likewise, the need to create institutional mechanisms through legislation – the Select Committee’s report referred to above is a good example – underlines once again the role of the state in the ﬁeld of language and social engineering in the complex context of Mauritius. With the extension of the ranking and selection function to the Indian languages, the latter may have now acquired a new value-added role as instruments of access to the best secondary schools – the ‘Star schools’ – in the country.5 I mentioned at the beginning of this essay that the changes that took place during the late nineteenth century and ﬁrst half of the twentieth century – basically, the social, cultural and political rise to power of the Mauritians of Indian origin – had a bearing on the system even if they did not challenge its foundations. The system became more ﬂexible and elastic. Later, under mass pressure for political, social and cultural transformation, the elite opted for compromise and adjustment. This has been more or less the pattern of change and evolution followed by modern Mauritius. It may be described as the politics of consensus and gradualism. Economically, sugar, the agricultural backbone of Mauritian society, has been progressively giving way to industry and tourism, which are clearly the more dynamic, proﬁtable and future-oriented sectors of the economy. Industrialisation has developed a keen awareness of the value and importance of the Western linguistic and cultural heritage. Tourism has led to the development of a sophisticated infrastructure to cater for the taste and comfort of Western clientele. It has also encouraged the country to preserve and promote its cultural diversity as a tourist-appealing commodity. The result has been a soft composite version of the various cultures cultivated as part of the sun-sand-and-sea package but which, interestingly, is also appealing to the more and more Westernised average Mauritian irrespective of his or her ethnic background. Little India beyond the seas – the seaside postcard image – makes everybody feel good.

Postscript In the global world context cultural uniformity may be viewed as either an asset or a threat. The debate has been going on for some time in post-

30

Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing

colonial circles. Then the Creole world of island societies discovered that their short history of human, cultural and social creolisation contained the basic ingredients for an advanced conceptual understanding of the cultural process accompanying globalisation. The proponents of the Créolité movement in the French Caribbean, for example, argue that the Old World civilisations are going through a process of cultural creolisation accelerated by technological modernity and modern migration. Mauritius too as a creation of colonisation belongs to the New World, more particularly to its Creole component. But it has always maintained that creolisation could not embrace the totality of its post-slavery society for various reasons: the contractual status and numerical strength of the Indian coolies, the return possibility, the proximity of the homeland and, last but not least, the fact that they successfully transferred and adjusted their cultural and religious practices and systems. The creolisation process was thus neutralised to a signiﬁcant extent by the reconstitution of the ancestral social and cultural matrix. The result was that Mauritius developed into an original mix of Creole and ancestral society that has yet to be studied in depth. The ofﬁcial cultural policy of the country is summarised in the familiar formula of unity in diversity. In its early application it meant cultivating the inherited East–West diversity while promoting national unity. Its current application may be seen as a further reﬁnement which seeks to give legitimacy and expression to the mosaic of speciﬁc cultural identities covered by the broader reference categories. The new millennium government has thus chosen to celebrate diversity by adding Tamil, Telugu and Marathi cultural centres to the existing state-sponsored Indian, Islamic and AfricanCreole cultural centres. It has also decided to set up a Mauritian cultural centre, a project which goes beyond the concept of national unity and aims at the idea(l) of Mauritian plural identity. The roots/routes of origin will hopefully cross-fertilise and graft on those of the new homeland. Somduth Bhuckory’s poem, which I quoted earlier, expresses a deeprooted attachment to the great ancestral land. It was composed in 1967, on the eve of independence. Two years later, a seminar on the Indian diaspora, probably the ﬁrst of its kind, was held in Delhi. The statement that follows comes from a paper on Mauritius, presented by a participant from India: ‘It would be wrong to consider Mauritius any longer the “Little India beyond the seas”, as it would to consider it “Isle de France”. Mauritians of any origin are now Mauritians, singularly and ﬁnally, and their country is Mauritius’ (Sauldie 1971: 307). In a recent invitation to Mauritians settled abroad to come and invest in the country, the Mauritian Prime Minister addressed them as PMO: People of Mauritian Origin. India for her part has always encouraged Mauritians of Indian origin to invest in India. As for the Mauritians themselves, they are increasingly conscious of the advantages of being culturally plural in a world set to be global.

Chota Bharat, Mauritius

31

Notes 1 By an ironical twist of political destiny, the September 2000 elections saw the victory of a last minute opposition alliance. It was led by Sir Aneerood Jugnauth, and was founded on a daring formula of shared prime ministership, with Sir Aneerood Jugnauth, becoming Prime Minister for the ﬁrst three years and Paul Berenger, his ally, taking up the post for the remaining two years as from 2003. The historical signiﬁcance of this arrangement is that for the ﬁrst time a non-Hindu would become Prime Minister of Mauritius. 2 The perspective of a non-Hindu Mauritian Prime Minister as from 2003 may be contrasted with the Trinidadian situation where the established principle of a Black Prime Minister was successfully challenged in 1995 when a Hindu was elected Prime Minister for the ﬁrst time. 3 The changes introduced in the 1990 Census have been maintained in the 2000 Census questionnaire. The new Census report, to be published in 2002, should reconﬁrm the socio-linguistic trends observed. 4 They have in fact been shelved, pending an acceptable comprehensive reform of the education system. 5 The whole issue of Oriental languages at school is under review following the change of government in September 2000 and the subsequent preparation of a new reform proposal.

References and further reading Allen, R. (1983) ‘Creoles, Indian immigrants and the restructuring of society and economy in Mauritius, 1767–1885’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois. Bahadursingh, I. J. (ed.) (1979) The Other India: The Overseas Indians and their Relationship with India, Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann. Beejadhur, A. (1935) Les Indiens à L’Ile Maurice, Mauritius: Port Louis. Benedict, B. (1961) Indians in a plural society. London: HMSO. —— (1965) Mauritius: Problems of a Plural Society, London: Pall Mall. Bhuckory, S. (1979) ‘Indians in Mauritius’, in I. J. Bahadursingh (ed.), The Other India: The Overseas Indians and their Relationship with India, Delhi: ArnoldHeinemann. —— (1988) Hindi in Mauritius, 2nd edn, Mauritius: Editions de l’Océan Indien. Bissoondoyal, U. (1992) Promises to Keep, New Delhi: EOI/Wiley Eastern Ltd. —— (ed.) (1984) Indians Overseas: The Mauritian Experience, Mauritius: M.G.I. Central Statistical Ofﬁce (1972, 1983, 1990) Mauritius: Population Census of Mauritius. Emrith, M. (1979) The History of Muslims in Mauritius, Mauritius: Editions Le Printemps. Eriksen, T. H. (1993) Us and Them in Modern Societies, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press. —— (1990) ‘Communicating cultural difference and identity: ethnicity and nationalism in Mauritius’, Occasional papers in Social Anthropology, University of Oslo. Gupta, A. (ed.) (1971) Indians Abroad: Asia and Africa, Delhi: Orient Longman. Hazareesingh, K. (1950) History of Indians in Mauritius, Mauritius: General Printing. Hookoomsing, V. Y. (1986a) ‘Langue et identité ethnique: les langues ancestrales à Maurice’, Journal of Mauritian Studies 1(2): 117–37. —— (1986b) ‘Creole and the language situation in Mauritius’, in E. Annamalai, B.

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Jernudd and J. Rubin (eds), Language Planning: Proceedings of an Institute, Mysore: CIIL. —— (1994) ‘Preserving pluralism in the context of development and modernisation: The case of Mauritius with particular reference to the IndoMauritians’, paper presented at the conference on ‘The Maintenance of Indian Languages and Culture Abroad’, CIIL, Mysore, 5–9 January. Macmillan, A. (1991) Mauritius Illustrated, 2nd edn, Tahiti: Les Editions du Paciﬁque. Mauritius National Assembly (1993) Report of the Select Committee on the Certiﬁcate of Primary Education/Oriental Languages, Mauritius. Sauldie, M. N. (1971) ‘Indians in Mauritius’, in A. Gupta (ed.), Indians Abroad: Asia and Africa, Delhi: Orient Longman. Tinker, H. (1977) ‘Mauritius: Cultural marginalism and political control’, African Affairs 76: 321–38. Vajpayee, A. B. (1979) ‘Inaugural Address’, in I. J. Bahadursingh (ed.), The Other India: The Overseas Indians and their Relationship with India, Delhi: ArnoldHeinemann.

Chapter Title

2

33

Hinduism in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa Alleyn Diesel

One cannot go far in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) without becoming aware of the Indian presence: of places of worship (temples and mosques); shops selling Indian foods, spices, clothing, books and musical instruments; posters advertising Indian movies; and ﬂags (jhanda) ﬂuttering from bamboo poles in many gardens. Although the total Indian population of the province forms only a small minority of the whole (9.4 per cent), it constitutes a very visible presence. The total number of Indian people in South Africa at present is just over one million (1,045,596 in 1996), approximately 2.6 per cent of the total population, and of these approximately: • • • •

62 per cent are Hindu 19 per cent are Muslim 13 per cent are Christian 6 per cent belong to other religious or philosophical groups, or to none.

Natal, the province to which Indians originally came last century, is still the stronghold of the Indian presence in South Africa, with 80 per cent of the country’s approximately 500,000 Hindus living there.1 Hindus constitute 35 per cent of the population of greater Durban, and 18 per cent of Pietermaritzburg’s population. The early Tamil immigrants from south India, who still constitute the majority of Hindus in South Africa, brought with them the veneration of Dravidian ‘folk’ deities, which has remained an extremely popular aspect of their daily worship. Throughout the 140 years of their residence in South Africa the ritual of this ancient tradition has been meticulously preserved, although knowledge of the accompanying mythology is steadily being lost. For example, the annual Draupadi ﬁrewalking festival, one of the most popular festivals in KZN, which brings devotees a strong sense of identity and solidarity, is celebrated with precise attention to the details of ritual, but with increasing ignorance of its rich mythological background. The research of Loring Danforth (1989) has shown the potential for the healing and empowerment of devotees from their participation in ﬁrewalking. I believe that the mythology of the Dravidian

34

Alleyn Diesel

Amman Goddesses (including that of Draupadi), which focuses on women’s experiences of injustice, suffering and eventual vindication, can offer contemporary women powerful role models and a challenge to struggle against male intimidation and violence. With the recent moves in the Tamil community to recover knowledge of the vernacular and take pride in their heritage, they could also be encouraged to recognise and reclaim the full potency of this unique part of their religious tradition which they have so carefully conserved.

Historical background Indians started arriving in South Africa in November 1860 to work as indentured labourers on the coastal sugar estates of the colony of Natal, north and south of the port of Durban. About ten years later other groups of immigrants began to arrive in the colony, and became known as ‘passenger’ Indians as they were able to pay for their own passages, and held British travel documents. The majority of the indentured labourers were Tamils from around the south Indian city of Madras, and belonged largely to the Sudra class (Pillay et al. 1989: 145).2 Later, ships brought more labourers from the northern areas of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The ‘passenger’ Indians, many of who came from around Bombay and Gujarat, were economically better off. Their interest in coming to South Africa was largely to engage in commerce, as traders bringing much needed and prized Indian goods to the outlying communities of homesick immigrants. Most of these people were Muslims, whereas the vast majority of the indentured people, approximately 90 per cent, were Hindu (ibid.: 146). The ‘passenger’ population has been estimated as approximately 10 per cent of those who arrived in the early years of immigration (Lemon 1990: 131). Altogether, just over 150,000 indentured Indians were brought to Natal in the ﬁfty-year period between 1860 and 1911 when the system of indenture was stopped by the Indian government. The four language groups represented by the Hindus who came to Natal are the Dravidian languages, Tamil and Telugu, of those from the south Indian areas of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and the Indo-Aryan languages, Hindi and Gujarati, of those from north India. The approximate size of these groups in South Africa at present is as follows: • • • •

Tamils form 45 per cent of the South Africa Hindu population Telugus 18 per cent Hindi speakers 30 per cent Gujaratis 7 per cent.

Recent census returns indicate, however, that 95 per cent of Indian South Africans speak English as their ﬁrst language, although ‘a distinct South African Indian speech pattern continues to be a tie that binds’ (Freund 1995: 9, 87).

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The traditional caste/class system has never been much observed in the South African context, largely because of the forced mixing of people from a variety of backgrounds, social classes, geographical areas, and religions (Kuper 1960: 20–1).3 As the majority of the Hindu labourers were from the lower castes, it was not to their advantage to maintain a system which discriminated against them. However, the immigrants maintained their Indian identity through their language and religious practice. After serving ten-year contracts, the majority of the labourers exercised their choice to remain in Natal, moving to the city of Durban and the surrounding areas where they became engaged in market gardening, hawking, ﬁshing and domestic work. Many continued growing sugar cane, and acquired their own small holdings (several thousand Indians are still engaged in cane growing). Market gardeners were engaged in the production of fruit and vegetables largely for white consumption, sometimes managing to establish shops from which to sell their produce. The women of these families were usually actively involved in both the growing and marketing of the produce. Freund records the existence of a largely Tamil ﬁshing village on Salisbury Island, in Durban bay, as early as the late 1860s, selling ﬁsh on the beach, as well as at the Indian Market in the city. He comments: ‘Nothing is more characteristic of the life of Indian workers in Durban than ﬁshing from the sand or off the rocks onto the steep coastal shelf of the Indian Ocean’ (1995: 34–5). This is true of many Pietermaritzburg Indians even at present, numbers of whom make frequent trips to the coast and return with ﬁsh for family consumption as well as to sell. Other immigrants found employment in the Durban municipality, in various forms of agriculture, in the northern Natal coal mines, and in the Natal government railways. Many were involved in building the railway line from the coast to the Transvaal, which was opened in 1895. As the building of the line progressed, so Indians moved into the Natal interior. This move to cities and towns was the beginning of a process that has resulted in the South African Indian population becoming thoroughly urbanised, with approximately 91 per cent of Indians in Natal living in urban areas by 1985 (Freund 1995: 13). However, most Indians remained extremely poor, working very hard for small returns, and with few opportunities for improvement. Many in the local Hindu community, especially in the Tamil group, have tended to remain within the lowerworking-class category of unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Freund comments: ‘Probably the majority of the Indian working class in Natal is Tamil-speaking. Rather few Tamils could be described as middle class until the last couple of generations and very few came to South Africa as “passenger Indians” ’ (1995: 417). The Gujarati Hindus are notably ﬁnancially better off, largely because of their original ‘passenger’ status, with many people from this group in business and the professions (Kuper 1960: 60; Maharaj 1995: 42–3). The early immigrants found life in their new country very difﬁcult, with family life drastically disrupted, to the extent of being practically non-

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existent. Poor housing, long working hours, malnourishment, and unhygienic conditions were the norm, with a high mortality rate (Beall 1990: 151). There were numerous complaints about their living and working conditions. Although the Indian government set a requirement that four women be brought to South Africa for every ten men, few women were initially prepared to make the difﬁcult journey from their homeland to face new and uncertain conditions. Eventually, numbers of Indian women, many of whom were young widows, or deserted by husbands, disowned by families, often poor and sickly, were driven by desperation to offer themselves for indentures (Kuper 1960: 15). In Natal their condition was often no better, as they found themselves unwelcome, with employers wanting only strong, healthy men (Beall 1990: 150–1). Further, confusion surrounded the conditions of women’s employment, so that many of them were dreadfully exploited both by employers and by their fellow male compatriots, with numerous accounts of women being bought, sold, and given away, in return for rations, clothing, or other favours (ibid.: 155, 159). Beall points out that: ‘Indentured women were the lowest-paid workers in the colony, when they were paid at all … [they] were located at the very bottom of the classrace-gender hierarchy in the colony’ (ibid.: 156, 166). For women, after the expiry of their indentures, the only options, according to Beall, were ‘repatriation, marriage, or some other form of dependence on a male partner or relative’ (ibid.: 156). There is evidence that the practice of child marriage, so condemned by Neo-Hindu (Reform) groups in India, and outlawed there in 1929, was regularly practised in Natal, with accounts of girls as young as ten and twelve years old having marriages arranged for them (ibid.: 150, 163). As Indians moved out of the indenture system, they began to reconstruct the extended family, thus establishing a much-needed security for its members (Freund 1995: 420; Beall 1990: 163). It must be remembered, however, that the patriarchal family structure has also resulted in oppressive relationships, and considerable violence against women. Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, apartheid ‘Group Areas’ legislation brought more severe and tragic disruptions to the by now fairly settled and integrated Indian communities of Natal. It has been estimated that up to 80 per cent of the Durban Indian population was moved under the forced removals programme (Freund 1995: 64). People from the central areas of the city were taken to the new working-class (largely Tamil) community of Chatsworth which was opened in 1964. This was situated far from the city and people’s places of work, as well as from traditional places of worship. It has been described as ‘a separate Indian city detached from Durban and its resources’ (Freund 1995: 89). Other working-class Durban Indians were resettled in Newlands and Phoenix to the north. Two, more afﬂuent areas were created at Isipingo Beach, to the south, and Reservoir Hills, near the newly created Indian University of Durban-Westville. In Pietermaritzburg Indians were also moved to the new suburb of Northdale, with small,

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poorly-built houses, on the other side of the city from where they had lived for decades. Although many families expressed satisfaction with the new, more modern accommodation, most of the extended families were forced to split up because of the small houses (ibid.: 76, 85–6). This caused considerable hardship, particularly for the aged, as well as greater expense, especially in rent and transport. Relocation in many cases broke social contacts within what had been well-established, supportive communities (Maasdorp and Pillay 1977: 122–8). Initially, resources in the new areas were extremely poor, with shops, schools and health facilities often only being provided considerably later (Freund 1995: 85). These upsets, especially the break-up of the extended family, have had profoundly negative effects on many in the Indian community, resulting in feelings of frustration, depression, discontent and a general sense of loss of dignity. Nevertheless, with characteristic tenacity, these large groups of displaced people managed to reorganise themselves, and rebuild their lives in the new areas. However, alcoholism, crime, family violence and divorce rates have become increasingly prevalent, indications of the stress associated with a lack of recognition as a community, and with social change (Ramphal 1989: 84).4 It is also important to recognise that another negative consequence of apartheid policies has been the harm done to race relations, resulting in the fact that ‘Indians of all classes felt a sense of antagonism and distance from whites’ (Freund 1995: 84). The damage to Indian/African relations is also an ongoing problem.5 By 1980 the process of removals began to slow down, and the ‘grand plan’ was never fully implemented. Some determined individual families had managed to remain in their original homes, and a few whole communities, such as Clairwood to the south of Durban, successfully resisted expulsion. From 1960 onwards a period of rapid industrial expansion, especially centred round Durban, provided much-needed work for many Indians. Many were employed as semi-skilled workers in the textile and clothing industry, and from 1970 the number of skilled workers increased markedly. Another signiﬁcant development of the 1960s was the number of Indian women who began working in the factories. This trend has increased over the years, although as women have become better educated they have moved into ofﬁce work, business, and the professions (Freund 1995: 426). However, becoming wage-earners has not necessarily increased women’s independence from patriarchal control (ibid.: 81–2).

Tamil identity in KZN It seems safe to claim that although Indians of the original immigrant community lacked social or regional homogeneity, their traditional language-based backgrounds, and especially their religion, have assisted them in preserving a sense of identity and worth, and provided a much-

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needed continuity with their past. Fatima Meer has recently pointed out that although most Indians are now outwardly modern and sophisticated, their religion and family traditions make them clearly distinguishable from other South Africans (article in Natal Witness, 11 July 1998). It would seem that the main social division between South African Indians is whether they identify themselves as originating from either north or south India (personal communication). The Tamil language (Thamizh), spoken by the majority of the early settlers, was gradually replaced by English as the mother tongue of the Indian community, especially from about 1960 onwards, so that few at present have any real knowledge of Tamil (Freund 1995: 86). This was largely because of the need to communicate with other South Africans, and because the state schools for Indians used English as the means of instruction. There is also evidence that vernacular classes in the earlier years of last century were generally badly taught, with rote learning and harsh discipline, so that many children became reluctant to attend (Hey 1961: 25–6). This loss of the language of their grandparents is largely an indication of how South African Indians have adapted to life in this country. But the decline in the use of the vernacular has recently been regretted, and concerted efforts are being made to re-introduce knowledge of the various Indian languages. Many Hindus believe that recovery of the vernacular languages will make a valuable contribution towards maintaining and revitalising both cultural and religious knowledge. As Ramasar has observed: The role and importance of religion is dwindling so much so that children have no knowledge of their religious practices and the signiﬁcance of these. . . . Revival of religious teaching and with it the mother tongue is regarded by many as a solution to several of these emerging problems. (Ramasar 1967: 35) Numbers of afternoon classes have therefore been started to teach the original languages to children. A distinction is made between ‘vernacular’ classes/schools, which are privately organised by local Tamil associations, and are run in the afternoons or evenings, and ‘Tamil’ classes, which have been offered since 1984 in state primary schools as part of their ‘Eastern Languages’ programme, as an optional extra for pupils. The ‘vernacular’ classes are run within a religious context, and so are able to include religious and cultural background, and to use religiously oriented texts. These classes all come under the supervision of the South African Tamil Teachers’ Federation, which supervises standardised syllabuses and examinations for the whole country, as well as running courses for teachers. At present, in Pietermaritzburg, there is a weekly adult ‘vernacular’ class, as well as ﬁve or six different classes run by various organisations in the

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afternoons for children. The present estimate is that approximately 19,000 children attend Tamil classes in KZN (personal communication from a Tamil teacher). A Senior Citizens’ Club meets all day on Wednesdays, with an attendance of approximately 160, divided into a Tamil and a Hindi group, each group engaging in conversation, and learning songs and dances belonging to their particular language and culture. A recent conference on Thamizh, held by the Dravida Society in Reservoir Hills, Durban, discussed various methods of teaching and promoting the language and culture, such as attracting children, youth and adults by using dance, drama and music. The conference recommended the establishing of a National Thamizh Sangam to promote these aims (Tamil Guardian International, November 1999). The Hindu Young Men’s Association (HYMA) was founded in 1905 in Pietermaritzburg, as a Tamil organisation dedicated to the preservation of Tamil culture. Members claim this as the oldest Hindu organisation in the country, with the South African Hindu Maha Sabha, the general coordinating body of South African Hinduism, being formed in Durban in 1912. The aims of HYMA were to form a local centre for Hindu intellectual development, and over the years their building has housed a library, as well as being the venue for a debating society, a charitable ‘poor relief ’ society, a theatre, and other social, political and cultural functions. For many years it has run free Tamil classes for all who wish to attend. The Tamil Mathar Sungum was the women’s association, which worked in conjunction with HYMA, but disintegrated after the Group Areas removals disrupted people’s lives. However, there are current plans to revive women’s participation in HYMA (Natal Witness, 3 December 1999). Another active Pietermaritzburg organisation is the Tamil Protective Society, founded early last century, and also engaged in language teaching and promoting the culture. Evidence of a new generation of young people familiar with and taking pride in their Tamil culture is the increasing number of youngsters singing in choirs at religious functions, and the growth in popularity of eisteddfods featuring Tamil music (personal communication). The newspaper Tamil Guardian International, published monthly in Chatsworth, and containing local, Indian and international news of interest to the Tamil community, as well as promoting the learning of the vernacular, has recently become available locally, and appears to be increasingly popular. In a move counter to this trend, and much lamented by many local Indians, the University of Durban-Westville closed its Department of Indian Languages at the end of 1999 because of lack of funding and a general drop in student numbers. The South African Tamil Federation, founded in Durban in 1968, is the major national Tamil institution, and part of the South African Hindu Maha Sabha. It is made up of the three regional afﬁliates – the Natal, Gauteng and Cape Tamil Federations – thus uniting all the country’s Tamil organisations. Its present headquarters are in Gauteng province.

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The Saiva Sithantha Sungum, another Tamil-oriented organisation, founded in Durban in 1937, has branches in Pietermaritzburg and Johannesburg. There are links with the medieval Tamil Saiva Siddanta tradition which emphasised the supremacy and graciousness of the great God Shiva. Today the Sungum adopts a Neo-Vedantic position, stressing the unity and universality of all religions, and the importance of the inner spiritual life. Consistent with this approach, the Sungum tends to discourage many of the traditional ritualistic Tamil/Dravidian ‘folk’ ceremonies, and many adherents are extremely critical of festivals such as ﬁrewalking and Kavadi. Their Shaivite background inﬂuences their observance of festivals such as Maha-Shivaratri and Kartigai Deepam (Kuper 1960: 189, 214; Diesel and Maxwell 1993: 76). The performance of rituals without an understanding of their meaning is increasingly being condemned. The existence of an organisation such as the Saiva Sithantha Sungum is a valuable reminder that the South African Tamil community is by no means monolithic, with a considerable variation of opinions and practices. Altogether, a remarkable number of Tamil associations exist throughout South Africa, one of the newest and most interesting being the Dravidians for Peace and Justice, a human rights organisation launched in East London in November 1999 (Tamil Guardian, November, 1999). Another factor in this recent revival of pride in their culture, described by some as a ‘renaissance’, is the opening of post-apartheid South Africa to the world community, and the increasing number of Tamil ﬁlms (with English subtitles) which have lately been shown in the country at major movie venues, together with the new interest these have stimulated in Tamil music and dance. A Sunday morning television programme, Eastern Mosaic, is extremely popular, reviving interest in Hindu culture through movies, news, and the showing of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. All the Tamil people to whom I have spoken recently express great pride in their origins, accompanied by a strong desire to recover knowledge of the language, if not for themselves, then for their children, and many have told of their great desire to visit India in an attempt to discover their roots. Unfortunately, for many this is not ﬁnancially possible. There is, in general, though, no wish on the part of South African Indians to return to India permanently, and not many show any real interest in contemporary Indian politics (Natal Witness, 11 July 1998). The various religious and cultural organisations have helped people to feel pride in being part of an ancient and rich tradition, and this sense of solidarity has, in turn, helped them adjust to the often difﬁcult circumstances of their lives as a minority group in a country with ambivalent attitudes towards them. Many South African Indians are beginning to feel increasingly comfortable with their identity as citizens of this country, realising that this is not incompatible with a developing pride in their own particular cultural and religious heritage.

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At the same time many Tamil people, especially the poorer among them, tend to share the feelings of uncertainty, even fear, expressed by many local Indians, that they have not, as yet, beneﬁted from the new democratic dispensation, and that ‘in the process of powering the majority, they as a minority will be prejudiced’ (Natal Witness, 11 July and 24 August 1998).

Tamil religion in KZN Hindu religion in South Africa consists of four main streams: • • •

•

traditional ritualistic Hinduism, the majority group Arya Samaj, which originated in India in 1875 and was brought to South Africa from 1905 onwards by two missionaries Neo-Vedanta, established in India in the nineteenth century, and represented in South Africa mainly by the Ramakrishna Centre, founded in 1946, and the Divine Life Society, started in 1949 Hare Krishna (ISKCON), established in South Africa in 1975 by the visit of the founder, Swami Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada.

There is also a signiﬁcant and growing number of Sai Baba devotees, who often also associate themselves with one of the other groups, especially traditional Hinduism (Diesel and Maxwell 1993). As stated above, throughout their residence in South Africa, religion has certainly been the most powerful stabilising force in the Hindu community (Kuper 1960: 269; Pillay et al. 1989: 145). Evidence of this is the fact that wherever they settled, shrines and temples were soon constructed, and obviously played a major role in helping these early settlers to maintain awareness of their heritage and to re-construct their identity in the often inhospitable conditions of their adopted country. As the Tamil community is the largest, their form of traditional ritual and practice predominates, especially in KZN. Kuper points out that: ‘South African Hinduism diverges in many respects from classical Hinduism, reﬂecting different social conditions and opportunities, but . . . many of the basic rituals and beliefs persist’ (1960: 186). Although most of the early Hindus were illiterate, they had a deeply instilled knowledge of their familiar rituals, relating both to daily puja performance and to the grander annual festivals. There has, generally, been considerable resistance to change in the patterns of worship, and devotees’ familiarity with the ritual has been faithfully transmitted over the generations in the new environment. However, as stated above, I believe that the ritual has largely become divorced from its controlling mythology, with few people being aware of more than some very rudimentary, and at times garbled, details of the various stories. This is largely because for several generations so few people were able to read, accompanied by a scarcity of religious literature, and, more recently, because of the loss of knowledge of the original languages.

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Most South African Hindus, particularly Tamils, are Shaivites, with the worship of Muruga/Murugan/Soobramoniar (a deity with south Indian, non-Vedic, origins, later regarded as a son of Shiva) being probably the most popular expression of this particular tradition (Clothey 1978). Shiva’s other son, Ganesha/Ganapati, is also very popular. Hanuman is another much-venerated deity, although, strictly, he belongs within the Vaishnavite family. However, like the non-Vedic Shiva himself, both Ganesha and Hanuman probably had non-Vedic origins in the indigenous tribes of India, thus ﬁtting very comfortably alongside the other indigenous Dravidian deities (mostly female) of the areas of south India from which the Tamil immigrants came. For most South African Tamil people, and many other traditional Hindus, the Mother Goddess, in one form or another, is the most visible and popular focus of their worship. Those Goddesses most venerated in KZN are the south Indian indigenous deities Mariamman, Draupadi, Ankalamman/Angalamman and Gengaiamman; the ﬁerce Goddesses Kali and Durga from the Brahmanical tradition; and Sarasvati, Lakshmi and Parvati, the consorts of the great Gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva respectively. The worship of these Dravidian Amman (Mother) Goddesses is a very vibrant and ancient form of religion, with roots tapping into some of the oldest manifestations of human spirituality, possibly having some continuity with the Indus Valley civilisation of approximately 3000–1700 BCE (Brubaker 1983: 149). These female deities, often referred to as ‘folk’ or ‘village’ Goddesses, are regarded as guardians of the villages, responsible for the well-being of humans, animals and nature. Although they are often feared as being easily angered, the cause of diseases and natural disasters, they are also revered as the great nurturing Mother Earth who gave birth to all life, and to whom all will eventually return (Brubaker 1983; Kinsley 1986: 197–8). The most obvious characteristics of traditional Tamil religion in KZN are: the performance of elaborate, ancient rituals; the taking of vows; the performance of austerities such as the sticking of pins and hooks through the ﬂesh, as well as ﬁrewalking; possession trances; the preoccupation with the propitiation of deities; and the focus on healing, both psychological and physical, which it is hoped will result. Blood sacriﬁce still plays an important part in the devotions of numbers of people (especially to the Goddesses Mariamman and Angalamman/Kali), although considerable disapproval of this has recently been expressed in other Hindu circles. Much religious observance takes place in the home, but the larger festivals are centred around the temple and the priest. The most popular and high-proﬁle Tamil festivals celebrated annually are: • •

the Draupadi ﬁrewalking festival (dealt with below) the Mariamman ‘Porridge’ festival or prayer, where ‘cooling’ foodstuffs such as fruits, rice, milk, and sour porridge (Kulu) are offered to this

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•

•

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south Indian Goddess of disease (especially pox diseases), in order to cool her anger and entreat her protection – many devotees still sacriﬁce roosters and goats at this festival (Diesel and Maxwell 1993: 47–50) the Gengaiamman festival, celebrated for Genga/Ganga, usually described as Goddess of the Ganges River, and one of the ‘Seven Sisters’ (Diesel 1998: 106–7) Kavadi, celebrated twice yearly (Thaipoosam Kavadi in the Tamil month of Thai, January/February, and Chitraparvam Kavadi in the month of Chitray, April/May), in honour of Muruga/Soobramoniar (Diesel and Maxwell 1993: 42–7).

The ﬁrst three of these festivals are in honour of Goddesses, with Kavadi being the only one held for a male deity. They all include the characteristics listed above. A great number of temples in KZN are dedicated to Mariamman, the most widely worshipped south Indian Goddess, with the largest and most important being at Isipingo Rail, south of Durban, to which bus-loads of thousands of devotees come to attend her festival during the Easter weekend, mainly to seek healing. There are also temples dedicated to Angalamman (Kali), Gengaiamman, and one to Draupadi. There are, too, numerous Muruga temples. All the Amman places of worship are extremely busy, their annual festivals drawing large crowds, and many devotees visiting at other times to do puja which frequently involves seeking healing for various ailments. Many Tamils, especially older and more traditional people, still believe that illness and disease are caused by divine wrath or displeasure (usually of one of the Amman deities), so that the appropriate treatment is to seek propitiation through the correct rituals. Whereas in India a clear distinction is usually made between Brahmanical Goddesses and those of the folk or Amman tradition of south India, in South Africa this distinction is not so clearly recognised. This means that in KZN most Goddess temples stand on the same sites as those from the classical tradition, usually Shiva temples, but sometimes also Vishnu temples. Frequently priests from these temples also ofﬁciate at Goddess shrines, even when they are Brahmanical (Kurukkal) priests, who, in India, often refuse contact with these deities. As suggested above, in general, the rituals performed for these deities in South Africa appear to have been very carefully preserved, so that, for example, a comparison between the ritual details of Draupadi ﬁrewalking ceremonies held in present day KZN and those of south India, as researched by Hiltebeitel, reveals a remarkably close correspondence (Hiltebeitel 1988; Diesel 1994). Also, a description of a Draupadi festival observed in India in the eighteenth century by the French traveller Sonnerat, and reported by Frazer in The Golden Bough, records details practically identical with those still performed in KZN ceremonies (Frazer 1913: 6–8).

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I believe that the Tamil Amman religion offers not only an extremely ancient and fascinating ﬁeld of study for scholars of religion, but also constitutes a spirituality of great value to Hindu devotees, and possibly to non-Hindus as well. However, few people outside the Hindu community are aware of this vibrant form of religion, and even writing on Hinduism in South Africa, whether by Hindus or non-Hindus, generally ignores the phenomenon of Goddess veneration. Many scholars tend to misunderstand or dismiss Amman worship as being too focused on darkness, violence, disease and death. Certainly, in South Africa, there have recently been numerous predictions that observance of this type of indigenous Tamil ritual would decline and soon be abandoned, because it is a crude remnant of popular religious expression with no further contemporary relevance (Kuper 1960: 215, 269; Naidoo 1982). Contrary to this expectation, at present worship of the Dravidian deities appears to be ﬂourishing, with larger and larger crowds attending the festivals each year (Diesel 1990: 29–30; 1994: 89–90). Reasons suggested for this resurgence of interest in these festivals are the threat and fear of illness, especially measles and AIDS, and escalating medical costs; the perceived economic instability of the country, and the fact that many poorer Indians feel they have not as yet beneﬁted from the recent changes in government policy; as well as the political and social insecurity of a society in transition, the current violence, and the knowledge that the Indian community will continue to be a permanent minority. The Draupadi ﬁrewalking festival is characteristic of both the mythology and ritual of Amman veneration, providing a valuable example of its possible contemporary signiﬁcance, as well as of its popular appeal in KZN. It is the most widely attended Hindu festival in KZN, with a steadily increasing attendance, and growing media appeal. In Pietermaritzburg, over the past four or ﬁve years, this media attention has largely centred round the fact that the all-male temple committee would not allow women to walk across the ﬁre, although other temples in the province welcomed their full participation, as do most temples in India (Hiltebeitel 1988, 1991). The committee’s reasons were clearly sexist, claiming that women were more likely to be burned than men, and that certain women wished to dominate the proceedings (Diesel 1998). Because of this, a small group of Pietermaritzburg Hindu women, led by an enthusiastic and articulate devotee of the ‘Mother’, embarked on a campaign to overturn the temple committee’s ban. After several years of pleadings, petitions and newspaper articles presenting their protests, the women were ﬁnally allowed to cross the ﬁre at the 1999 festival, accompanied by much jubilation on the part of them and their supporters (Diesel 1998). I have argued that, in general, participation in the various rituals of these festivals can bring considerable empowerment, particularly to the South African Hindu community, which during the apartheid era was politically, socially and religiously marginalised and discriminated against

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(Diesel 1998). Many of the descendents of the south Indian indentured labourers have tended to remain relatively economically depressed, suffering more than usual stress, frustration and anxiety. This has led to considerable physical and psychological illness. Many people cannot afford frequent doctors’ fees, while others despair of the ability of conventional Western medicine to provide cures for their ailments. In this context, the entire worshipping community can be seen as experiencing a strong sense of identity and solidarity from their participation in the richly symbolic religious rituals, with their powerful mythology. To come through the ﬁre unscathed, viewed as afﬁrmation of one’s purity and devotion to the Goddess, is in itself empowering, and is claimed by many to bring healing. Loring Danforth, who studied two very different ﬁrewalking communities, the Greek orthodox Anasternaria and the American ﬁrewalking movement, maintains that participants are rhetorically moved from their present state, negatively deﬁned as one of illness, to a new state positively deﬁned as one of health. Through ﬁrewalking they are empowered; their lives are transformed. They gain an enhanced sense of self-conﬁdence and self-esteem and are able to function more effectively in the world in which they live. (1989: 288) These claims certainly appear to apply to local Hindus who participate in ﬁrewalking for the Goddess Draupadi, and, as Danforth observed, it is women whose lives are probably most radically transformed (ibid.: 5, 96). The status of women in Hinduism is traditionally lower than that of men, and they are expected to be permanently subject to male authority, with no independence or identity separate from their husbands. This also requires that they maintain a fairly low proﬁle at public events. However, at Amman Goddess festivals in KZN, women sometimes form the majority of devotees, many of whom have stepped out of their subservient roles to perform relatively important and visible functions which bring them considerable recognition and status. The small group of Pietermaritzburg women challenged the patriarchally controlled temple committee and won, which, together with their successful and safe passage through the ﬁre, has brought them a strong sense of achievement. Many women experience trance possession by what they believe is one of the ﬁerce Goddesses, such as Kali, Mariamman, or Draupadi, causing them to display wild behaviour not normally permitted in a respectable Hindu woman. Possessed people (women and men) are regarded as divine, their supernatural powers enabling them to act as oracles, to bless others, and, very often, to heal. Many women who regularly enter trances at festivals are regarded with great respect, and even reverence, in their communities. There are some who are regularly consulted as healers and religious counsellors (Diesel 1998). Some of these women have expressed their awareness of the

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connection between divine females and human females, viewing their close relationship with the Goddess as contributing to their identity and worth as women (ibid.). These possessing Goddesses can, I suggest, be regarded as the ‘alter egos’ of the women, their other selves, free of the restraints and subordination normally experienced in their lives as traditional Hindu women. Emily Kearns draws attention to the powerful role models that the images of these Goddesses offer women: that the wildness and anger of the Goddesses allows women to express something of their own stored-up anger against patriarchal oppression (1992: 219). By emulating the behaviour of the Goddesses, women are able to act in a way that brings them a sense of independence, conﬁdence and worth, challenges patriarchal control, and has the potential to bring healing. In order for the full healing and empowering potential of the Amman Goddesses to be realised, I believe it is necessary to recover some knowledge of their mythology. Once again, the mythology of the Goddess Draupadi, Mother of Fire, patron of the ﬁrewalking festival, is typical of that of most of the Amman Goddesses, and can be used to illustrate the signiﬁcance and contemporary relevance of these stories. Draupadi’s origin is in the Brahmanical, rather than the Amman, tradition, and her mythology is contained in the great Classical epic, the Mahabharata. However, the Tamil version of the epic, dating to c. 1400 CE, includes additions which link Draupadi with ﬁre, and which seal her apotheosis and annexation to the south Indian Amman religion (Hiltebeitel 1988). The story of Draupadi records her as a strong, spirited and outspoken woman, the faithful wife of the ﬁve Pandava brothers. When her family was subjected to the loss of their inheritance and years of exile in the forest, she courageously devoted herself to their welfare. An important part of her story involves numerous attempts by men to seduce and humiliate her, but her religious faith and purity brought her safely through these ordeals. Eventually Draupadi was vindicated, her faithfulness and purity recognised. According to the Tamil version, as a ﬁnal demonstration of her chastity she walked unscathed across a pit of burning coals. Her victory over her and the family’s enemies helped to restore order and harmony to the kingdom. The Draupadi story contains features characteristic of the mythology of many of the Amman Goddesses, which recount the details of hosts of women, named and unnamed, who were abandoned, deceived, betrayed, insulted, raped and killed by men (Kinsley 1986: 200–4). These ‘texts of terror’ also tell of how these righteously angry women drew strength from their purity, gained victory over male intimidation and violence, and brought healing to their communities. Many tales record these human women becoming Goddesses, so demonstrating the ultimate victory of women’s strength. The account of Draupadi’s journey, or odyssey, can be viewed as a quest for spiritual perfection where, after successfully enduring and overcoming various trials and hardships, she ﬁnally accomplishes her goal of puriﬁc-

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ation and sanctiﬁcation. Her ultimate ordeal of walking through ﬁre confers and seals her divine nature, her transformation into a Goddess worthy of the worship of her devotees, who must attempt to emulate her faithfulness and virtue. As observed in KZN, the Draupadi ﬁrewalking festival consists of richly symbolic rituals re-enacting the central features of her mythology. For ten or eighteen days (depending on the decision of the temple committee) devotees participate in various rituals and dramas depicting aspects of Draupadi’s story, which climax in the ﬁrewalking ritual, where a crowd of worshippers walks barefoot through the pit of coals. The Goddess is believed to precede them across the ﬁre, cooling the coals for them, so those with faith will emerge unharmed, and a new healthy state will beneﬁt the entire worshipping community. This idea of rebirth from ﬁre is a common theme in Hinduism. Some temples in KZN include more of the relevant mythology than others, and until recently a Durban temple has performed one of the Tamil plays in the cycle of Terukkuttu dramas which recounts some of the major events in the Draupadi saga. It was performed throughout the night preceding the ﬁrewalking ritual, re-enacting the fulﬁlment of Draupadi’s vow and her ﬁnal vindication, which was timed to take place at dawn (Kuppusami 1983: 104–5; Diesel 1994: 78–82). This drama can be compared to the Christian medieval ‘miracle plays’ which helped teach scriptural stories to a largely illiterate populace. Unfortunately, this production has ceased in the last few years, mainly because there are now insufﬁcient actors familiar with the script, and it is performed in Tamil which many people no longer understand. This is another example of the loss of Tamil religious mythology, and one wonders how long the ritual can persist without the accompanying mythology. Will the South African Draupadi festivals of the future be reduced to the bare minimum of ritual such as the opening ﬂaghoisting and the culminating ﬁrewalk? Does this ancient and colourful festival have the potential to attract tourists, and thus draw a wider circle of interest, as well as some much-needed extra revenue? Already some foreign visitors are showing interest in viewing Hindu temples. However, its growing popularity, along with that of other Tamil festivals such as the Mariamman festival and Kavadi, suggests it still has considerable power to remind a community, far from its spiritual home, of its roots. Hopefully, the recent emphasis on the revival of the vernacular will encourage local Hindus to recover more knowledge and appreciation of the rich symbolism and mythology of Tamil religion, including a re-reading of the mythology of the Amman Goddesses. More than this, though, I believe that the mythology of this ancient and possibly pre-patriarchal Amman Goddess religion of south India offers an explanation for, and the possible alleviation of, much of the suffering endured speciﬁcally by women, both in the ancient past and the present. The fact that these Goddesses are female appears to preserve and highlight

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the fact that it is most often males whose violence disrupts the order (dharma) of society, and that this dilemma requires the intervention of a divine female (a Mother) to challenge this destabilising behaviour and restore the order necessary for society to exist and thrive. Perhaps the most profound message of the Amman deities is to keep alive awareness of the conﬂict between the sexes in a patriarchal context and the necessity for women to be the initiators of its resolution. The ﬁgure of the Mother (Amman) Goddess, as a powerful role model for women, challenges them to join in her continued struggle against the violence perpetrated on them by male domination, and so to triumph over the circumstances of their lives. Thus both women and men who venerate the Amman Goddesses have at their disposal a divine image of healing and transformation, directly related to their emulation of the Mother’s courageous, nurturing, regenerative vitality.

Conclusion Certain contemporary religious commentators have suggested that in this new millennium more and more people will begin to rediscover and explore the rituals and stories of ‘folk religions’ as being able to offer a more vital and human-scale spirituality than is available in the ‘grand narratives’ of the great world religious traditions. Many people, particularly women, believe it is necessary to apply a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ to patriarchally dominated traditional religions, largely because of their marginalising of women, as well as their inability successfully to challenge unjust social structures, and are therefore seeking alternative religious expressions.6 Ronald Nicolson, for instance, considers that: Religion will lay less stress on logic and reason, more stress on poetry, symbolism and what we might call ‘right brain’ things. The great religions like Christianity and Islam will become less powerful – yet more people will become, in a loose sense, ‘religious’. (Natal Witness, 31 December 1999) Rather than following recent trends to dismiss or denigrate the Amman Goddesses, Tamil Hindus need to be encouraged to re-examine this unique ‘folk’ or vernacular tradition as a valuable part of their richly textured religious and cultural heritage, so recognising and claiming with pride the powerful contemporaneity of this ancient spirituality. These women-centred texts and rituals could then be powerfully inspirational and healing, encouraging women to imitate the fearlessness and determination of these female divinities and deiﬁed women, to promote more egalitarian gender relationships. The Amman religion has the potential to offer a ‘feminist theodicy’ which will enable men as well as women to challenge and overcome the structural violence that appears to have become endemic in so many societies.

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Notes 1 The ﬁrst Indian immigrants to South Africa were Muslims who came to the Cape Province from 1667 onwards. 2 Hilda Kuper reports that roughly 60 per cent of the indentured Hindus were of the Sudra and Scheduled castes; 25–30 per cent were Vaishyas; 10–15 per cent Kshatriyas; and a small number were Brahmins (1960: 7). 3 According to Kuper, in South Africa ‘The only community organised on caste divisions and adhering to traditional caste ideas at all strictly, is the Gujarati speaking Hindu’. This is largely because of their ‘passenger’ status, as well as their relatively better economic position (1960: 30). She also reports that the name of Maharaj, which in north India is usually a title, has been adopted by Hindi speaking families who claim to be Brahmin (ibid.: 27). 4 The change in the stability of family life and in the incidence of divorce in the Indian community is reﬂected in two quotations: Kuper talking of the situation in the 1950s said: ‘In both Indian and African societies . . . statistics of divorce, illegitimacy and delinquency reﬂect the greater stability of Indian family life in an urban environment’; whereas Freund, in 1995, comments on ‘alcoholism, the growing divorce rate, frequent family violence and murders, and a high level of tension for lack of social alternatives. By 1986 there [was] . . . a divorce rate close to one in seven in ﬂagrant contrast to the extremely conservative conventional image of the Oriental family’ (1995: 86). 5 A workshop, held in Durban at the end of January 2000, addressed IndoAfrican relations and racial tension, and culminated in the establishment of an Indo-African Institute to promote better race relations (Natal Witness, 29 January 2000; The Leader, 28 January 2000). 6 Aruna Gnanadason comments: ‘Folk religions today are mostly women-centered. Almost every village deity in South India is a female form. Worship of the Mother goddess and fertility goddesses center on the restoration of the soil and its nourishment for the production of food for the people of the earth, establishing a principle that lays emphasis on humanity’s responsibility to the earth . . . [T]here is a realization that these traditional popular religions cannot be ignored – they have to be appropriated to become a force in the transformation of society. In this process, attempts are made to go to folk sources – poetry, music, stories, myths (many of which have been lost, as they belong to the oral tradition) – to derive from them the wealth of meaning and spiritual power they provide’ (1994: 359).

References and further reading Arooran, K. Nambi (1985) Indians in South Africa: with Special Reference to the Tamils, Thanjavur: Tamil University. Beall, J. (1990) ‘Women Under Indentured Labour in Colonial Natal’, in Cherryl Walker (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945, Cape Town: David Philip. Brubaker, R. (1983) ‘The Untamed Goddesses of Village India’, in Carl Olson (ed.), The Book of the Goddess Past and Present, New York: Crossroad. Clothey, F. W. (1978) The Many Faces of Murukan: The History and Meaning of a South Indian God, The Hague: Mouton Publishers. Danforth, L. (1989) Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anasternaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Diesel, A. (1990) ‘Hindu Firewalking in Natal’, Journal for the Study of Religion 3(1): 17–33.

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—— (1994) ‘Ritual and Drama in the Worship of the Goddess Draupadi’, Journal for the Study of Religion 7(1): 65–94. —— (1998) ‘The Veneration of the Goddess as an Empowering Symbol for both Hindu and Contemporary Feminist Women: With Special Reference to the Worship of the Hindu Amman Goddesses in KwaZulu-Natal’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal. —— and Patrick Maxwell (1993) Hinduism in Natal: A Brief Guide, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press. Frazer, J. (1913) The Golden Bough, Vol. 11, London: Macmillan. Freund, Bl. (1995) Insiders and Outsiders: The Indian Working Class of Durban, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press. Gnanadason, Aruna (1994) ‘Women and Spirituality in Asia’, in Ursula King (ed.), Feminist Theology from the Third World, London: SPCK/Orbis. Hey, P. D. (1961) The Rise of the Natal Indian Elite, Pietermaritzburg: The Natal Witness. Hiltebeitel, A. (1988) The Cult of Draupadi. Vol. 1. Mythologies from Gingee to Kuruksetra, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —— (1991) The Cult of Draupadi. Vol. 2. On Hindu Ritual and the Goddess, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kearns, E. (1992) ‘Indian Myth’, in C. Larrington (ed.), The Feminist Companion to Mythology, London: Harper Collins. Kinsley, D. (1986) Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition, Berkeley: University of California Press. Kuper, H. (1960) Indian People in Natal, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press. Kuppusami, C. (1983) Religions, Practices, and Customs of South African Indians, Durban: Sunray Publishers. Lemon, A. (1990) ‘The Political Position of Indians in South Africa’, in Colin Clarke, Ceri Peach and Steven Vertovec (eds), South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maasdorp, G. and N. Pillay. (1977) Urban Relocation and Racial Segregation: The Case of Indian South Africans, Durban: University of Natal Department of Economics. Maharaj, P. (1995) ‘The Social Identities of Indians in a Changing South Africa’, unpublished thesis, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal. Meer, F. (1969) Portrait of South African Indians, Durban: Avon House. Naidoo, T. (1982) ‘Hinduism Today: Expanding Horizons’, in Challenge: Papers and Resolutions of the Seventieth Anniversary Convention of the South African Maha Sabha, Durban: The Maha Sabha. Pillay, G. J., T. Naidoo and S. Dangor. (1989) ‘Religious Proﬁle’, in A. J. Arkin, K. P. Magyar and G. J. Pillay (eds), The Indian South Africans, Pinetown: Owen Burgess. Ramasar, P. (1967) ‘Emerging Social Problems Among the Indian People of South Africa,’ in The Indian South African: papers presented at a conference held under the auspices of the South African Institute of Race Relations (Natal Region) in Durban, 14 October 1966, Durban: South African Institute of Race Relations. Ramphal, R. (1989) ‘Social Transition’, in A. J. Arkin, K. P. Magyar, and G. J. Pillay (eds), The Indian South Africans, Pinetown: Owen Burgess.

Chapter Title

3

51

Culture and economy Tamils on the plantation frontier in Malaysia revisited, 1998–1999 Ravindra K. Jain

Introduction This chapter is based on a re-study, undertaken from December 1998 to March 1999, in the same location and among the same Tamilian people as my initial ﬁeld investigation in Malaysia (then the Federation of Malaya) in 1962–3. The unit that I studied originally carried the pseudonym of ‘Pal Melayu’. It was a large rubber estate on the west coast of Malaya owned by a European company, situated about 35 kilometres from the capital city of Kuala Lumpur. In this chapter I use the same name, Pal Melayu, for the unit of my original investigation. But in deference to the wishes of my respondents during the re-study, I refer to the region where Pal Melayu is located by the real names of the towns – Kuala Selangor (earlier called ‘Bunga Raya’), Batang Berjuntai (earlier called ‘Bintang Emas’) and Bukit Rotan (earlier called ‘Baku Baku’). Furthermore, unlike in the earlier publication, I use real names rather than pseudonyms for all the persons referred to in this text. Compared to the fortunes of older Indian diasporics in the western Indian Ocean area (Mauritius and South Africa), the Paciﬁc (Fiji) and the Caribbean (Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Surinam), the majority of Indians in Malaysia1 have experienced socio-economic mobility very late in the twentieth century. A major benchmark in the rapid industrialisation and economic development of Malaysia was the inauguration of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1971. According to one author (Abdullah 1997), the catalysts for the NEP were the ambitious ‘afﬁrmative action’ policy and the violent incidents of May 1969. Moving emphasis away from the local causes, and writing about South East Asian economies in general, Ian Brown (1997) suggests that Malaysia was on the threshold of being designated a newly industrial country in the early 1990s. In 1991 the NEP was replaced by the National Development Policy (NDP) (MHHR 1998). The overall consequences of the NEP and NDP as regards the elimination or reduction of poverty, inequality in income distribution and corporate ownership within and between major ethnic groups, and the impact on Malaysia’s human rights, have all been hotly debated and polemically

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argued issues. Inevitably, the socio-economic fortunes of the Indian minority group, especially those either now or previously connected with the plantations, need to be discussed within this wider context. In the NEP years, a Bumiputera (literally ‘sons of the soil’, a designation for the Malay population) political and corporate elite connected with the ruling party was able to amass wealth through government enterprises as well as rent-seeking activities. Between 1970 and 1990, the Bumiputera ownership of share capital rose almost ten-fold, from 2.4 per cent to 20.3 per cent. The Chinese share almost doubled, while the Indian share fell by a small percentage. After the end of the NEP in 1990, the business elite was no longer composed of non-Bumiputera and foreigners only. It is now mainly dominated by certain politically well-connected Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera. When equitable distribution of wealth is considered, the NEP has not beneﬁted one ethnic group over another. Some Malays’ ownership of share capital rose sharply during the NEP. However the wealth of the community as a whole did not rise in the same measure.2 As the Malaysian Human Rights Report puts it, ‘Poverty among Malays is still widespread as it is among urban settlers, indigenous peoples, plantation workers (mainly Indian) and New Village residents (mainly Chinese). The NEP thus did not achieve its objective of inter-ethnic economic parity. It also failed to achieve equitable distribution of wealth among all Malaysians’ (MHHR 1998: 10–11). With speciﬁc regard to the Indian population in Malaysia, there has been considerable debate describing them as the poverty group, the subculture of poverty and ‘third in the race’ (see, for example, Rajoo 1985; Rajakrishnan 1987; Insan et al. 1989; Far Eastern Economic Review, June 1990; Jeyakumar 1993). In what follows I shall certainly pay careful attention to the documented facts of Indian poverty in Malaysia. But my restudy also endeavours to show another side of the picture: a comparison between then and now (early 1960s and late 1990s) which may be termed the ‘dynamics and scattering’ of the Indian group – if not actual mobility – over a 35-year period.3 Methodologically, the differences between my approach and most of the others are, ﬁrst, that my study relies on a microperspective in relation to the macro-universe, and second, that my interpretations take emic (i.e. informants’ subjective) factors into account from the start and subsequently build up an ‘etic’ (i.e. scientiﬁc observer’s) picture of the Indian ethnic group. For these very reasons, however, the generalisability of my ﬁndings and analysis will be limited.

The estate scenario The total area occupied by Pal Melayu in 1998–9 was roughly the same as in 1962–3, namely, about 4,000 acres. However, the cropping pattern had changed considerably. In 1962–3 nearly 95 per cent of the planted area was devoted to rubber. But in 1998–9 the proportion of rubber to oil palm

Tamils on the plantation frontier in Malaysia

53

planting was 13 per cent to 87 per cent. The number of labourers on Pal Melayu had also drastically reduced. Whereas in 1962 there were 541 labourers, in November 1998 there were 161, a reduction of nearly 70 per cent. The smaller size of the labour force is related to the greater mechanisation of oil palm cultivation compared to rubber. The sexdistribution of workers in 1962 was 52.3 per cent male and 47.7 per cent female. In 1999 women constituted less than one-third of the labour force. This again is related to the differences in technology between rubber tapping and oil palm collection. Very signiﬁcantly, the ethnic distribution of all workers on Pal Melayu in 1999 was only 80 (50 per cent) Indian, 67 (41 per cent) Indonesian, 13 (8 per cent) Bangladeshi and one Malay. (There are no Chinese workers on Pal Melayu.) In my sociological census of 1962, the resident population of Pal Melayu was 1,536, of which 1,509 or 98 per cent were Indian. At that time the non-Indian population of 27 consisted of 2 Europeans (the manager and his wife), 15 Chinese (2 households), and 10 Malays (2 households).4 The logical question, therefore, is about the fate of the earlier large population of Indians (mainly Tamils) on Pal Melayu. But before examining this, we shall look at some of the changes in the infrastructure of the estate and also at macro-level changes to plantations in Malaysia. The settlement pattern of Pal Melayu has changed in response to the change of crops, reduction in labour force, change in the ethnic composition of estate workers and the replacement of a European manager by an Asian one (a Chinese until 1997, then succeeded by a Malaysian Malayalee from 1998 onwards). The important change is that instead of three clear-cut nucleated residential ‘labour lines’ (Division I & II and ‘factory Division’), there is only one labour lines area – a portion of former Division II. The houses are no longer the type of kampong houses I described before (Jain 1970: 13–21), but single-storeyed ﬂats made of concrete and cement. There are no longer communal bathing and toilet facilities, but individual bathrooms and ﬂush toilets in the ﬂats. The drastically reduced number of dwelling units in the labour lines are also ethnically mixed – Indian, Indonesian and Bangladeshi labourers and their families live cheek-by-jowl. The centrally located Mariamman temple, football ﬁeld and Divisional Ofﬁce buildings – including the manager’s ofﬁce – remain where they were in the 1960s. There have been some changes in the bungalows of the Asian estate staff, for example the assistant manager’s bungalow is now next to the Indian manager’s bungalow. But the new manager still lives in the old European manager’s bungalow. To move again to the macro-level, I have already mentioned the inauguration of the NEP in 1970, and shall explore its consequences and implications for the Indian ethnic group a little later. In terms of state legislation, changes in citizenship and employment laws in 1968 and 1969 resulted in some 60,000 Indians having to leave Malaysia and a further 50,000 or so on plantations having to live in constant fear of eviction

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through the possible non-renewal of work permits (Sandhu 1993: 176; Jain 1985: 196–8). Next, following the enforcement of NEP, the area of land under plantations dropped from 906,106 hectares in 1983 to 704,127 hectares in 1992. Commensurately, the number of workers on the payroll of rubber estates declined more than 40 per cent from 104,979 to 59,127 during the same period. The fall in numbers would be even greater if estates other than rubber estates were included. Most of the affected estates were located in Selangor.5 Estates were converted for industry and housing, as well as luxury hotels and golf courses. The former Chief Minister of Selangor, Tan Sri Muhammed Taib, indicated that the number of estates in the state would decline from the existing 185 to 12 by the year 2020 (MHRR 1988: 11–2, 65). Another trend was the drastic reduction in the proportion of Indians among estate workers, from 45.5 per cent in 1967 to only 21.8 per cent in 1980 (Puthucheary 1993: 358). Finally, the replacement of rubber by oil palm on estates is also a Malaysia-wide phenomenon. In the late 1980s an estimated quarter of a million people worked on Malaysia’s rubber and oil palm plantations. In this period oil palm and rubber were Malaysia’s second and third most important export commodities after petroleum (Insan et al. 1989: 8). Already by 1983, oil palm had become a close second to rubber as Malaysia’s main export crop, as Table 3.1 shows. As Gullick has pointed out, ‘Palm oil has become a major element in the economy; in 1960 palm oil and kernels accounted for 2 per cent of the exports – in 1980 they are estimated to yield 12 percent . . . Since oil palm gives a much higher proﬁt per acre than rubber, it was inevitable that land which was replanted or newly cleared for planting would come under oil palm rather than rubber’ (Gullick 1981: 154–5). Similarly Lucas and Verry observe that ‘many of the estates (owned largely through Bumiputera trusts for most of the NEP period) have limited their labour demand by switching from rubber to the less labour intensive oil palm – a switch which has not been dictated by any trend in the relative prices of palm oil and rubber’ (Lucas and Verry 1996: 563). Malaysia is now the largest single producer of palm oil in the world. However oil palm is a more demanding crop than rubber trees. It generally grows better in coastal areas than in the drier inland areas. This is an additional reason why oil palm has been favoured for extensive planting and replanting on estates of the Pal Melayu region.6

Table 3.1 Share of rubber and oil palm in Malaysian export earnings, 1970–83 (in millions of dollars) 1970

Rubber Oil palm

1975

1980

1983

$

%

$

%

$

%

$

%

1,724 264

33.4 5.1

2,026 1,320

21.9 14.3

4,617 2,515

16.4 8.9

3,664 2,977

11.1 9.1

Source: Based on Mehmet 1988: 20.

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55

We may now consider relevant facts about the labour situation in Malaysia, particularly the increase in the employment of contract labour, especially of foreign (Indonesian and Bangladeshi) contract labour. According to ofﬁcial reports, Malaysia has enjoyed a robust economy since 1988 with an average growth rate of over 8 per cent per annum. The workforce has grown in parallel from about 5.6 million workers in employment in 1985 to about 7.9 million in 1995 (cited in Jomo and Kanapathy 1996: 19). In tandem with economic growth, the ofﬁcial unemployment rate fell steadily from a peak of 8.8 per cent in 1986 to 4.3 per cent in 1990 (ibid.) and to a virtually full employment situation of 2.6 per cent in 1996 (Star Economic Report 1996/97, cited in MHRR 1998: 45). Labour demand has been growing unabatedly at 3.27 per cent annually since the early 1980s, whereas the domestic labour supply declined by 2.8 per cent annually, creating labour shortages. As a long-term strategy, the government encouraged, in particular, the participation of women in the labour force and a shift to capital-intensive, high technology and knowledge-based industries. The short-term strategy has been to utilise foreign labour, generally estimated to be over 2 million strong in Malaysia. In the Malaysian experience there is an interesting positive correlation between an increase in the employment of foreign workers and the incidence of contract workers. Industrialisation and economic development are commonly assumed to increase the proportion of the labour force in regular employment. Scholars have observed a rise in the proportion of employees in Malaysia’s labour force over the period 1970–89 (Horton et al. 1991: 539). While this may be true of the economy as a whole, Lee and Sivananthiran (1996) show that rapid economic growth over the eight-year period 1988–96 was also characterised by a rise in the incidence of contract labour in at least three industries. Indeed, in the construction, plantation and sawmilling industries, contract labour has emerged as an important aspect of labour market development.7 As pointed out earlier, much of the increase in the incidence of contract labour in these industries is accounted for by the inﬂux of foreign migrant labour. Whereas both the principal employers and contractors cite labour shortages as major reasons for this recourse to contract labour, I agree with Lee and Sivananthiran (ibid.: 89) that ‘this argument is somewhat spurious. The real, underlying reason for their recourse to contract labour is their perceived need for more ﬂexible employment practices, brought home by the recession of the mid-1980s.’ The perspective of employers in respect of labour shortages and increased reliance on foreign contract labour may be shown by summarising the ﬁndings of a paper submitted by an employee (estate manager) of the company that owns Pal Melayu (Mougin 1993). According to Mougin, the local workforce has not proved sufﬁcient. The plantation sector, according to this author, has had to compete with the ‘bright lights of the city’ and local workers have shied away from the ﬁelds ‘to prefer air-conditioned factories’. One of the consequences of this high turnover of workers has

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been that on plantations in the 1990s the labour population has an average age of 40 years and above, with the younger workforce making up less than 10 per cent of the total workforce.8 The author cites the UPAM (United Planting Association of Malaya) surveys, which reveal an acute labour shortage that was already being felt in the mid-1980s. This shortage, as a percentage of total workforce, was 5.98 per cent in 1985, shot up to 11.56 per cent in 1991 and stood at 7.80 per cent in 1993. This shortage, by category of workers, was 40 per cent for weeders (unskilled workers) and 29.2 per cent for oil palm harvesters (semi-skilled workers). The rate of shortage on estates owned by the company to which Pal Melayu belonged was 13.6 per cent on 31 October 1993, and on Pal Melayu it was 30.9 per cent! In short, the consequences of the shortage of labour is a chain reaction leading to the ultimate deterioration of standards and yields, which in turn makes it difﬁcult to produce crops economically. With this situation deteriorating rapidly, agriculture has become more dependent on foreign labour for its salvation (ibid.: 5). The UPAM survey carried out in September 1993 pointed to an ofﬁcial ﬁgure of 37,510 foreign workers on its member estates or a very high percentage of 37.2 per cent of the total workforce. The ﬁgure for foreign workers in Pal Melayu in 1993 was 65 out of a total workforce of 178 (37 per cent or close to the national average). But it had increased to 80 out of a total workforce of 161 (50 per cent) by November 1998. None of the labourers on Pal Melayu in 1993 – local or foreign – were direct recruits. They were all contract workers. In 1998 there were 39 pay-roll workers to 122 contract labourers (75.76 per cent). In attempting a balance sheet of present and future mobility prospects of contract labour – both local and foreign – the ﬁndings of a survey by Lee and Sivananthiran (1996: 89) are noteworthy. Overall, the survey reveals that contract workers tend to be less educated than the labour force average. Given the number of years of experience they have had, their work history is characterised by a high rate of job turnover. The vast majority of contract workers have no written contract and are denied most of the beneﬁts provided under labour laws. However, they generally earn higher monthly pay than do other workers. Their higher earnings may, to some extent, compensate for the loss of statutory and other beneﬁts. Contract workers may be compelled to form stronger attachments to their contractors through the various loans and advances the latter provide. The determinants of contract workers’ monthly earnings show that a premium is put on their experience and skills, but that contractors offset the cost of providing any statutory and other beneﬁts to contract workers by paying them less. The above is said of contract labour as a whole in the three industries of construction, sawmilling and plantations. The picture is much more dismal when plantation workers alone are considered. For one thing, the planters’ grievance that there is acute labour shortage and severe difﬁculties in retaining contract workers has more than a grain of truth in it. The above

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57

survey revealed that principal employers – except those in the plantation industry – viewed both domestic and foreign contract labour as a permanent feature of their enterprise.9 On plantations there was the unreliability of retaining contract workers who readily ﬁnd more lucrative work in urban centres. Another feature of contract labour appeared in interviews with contractors, namely that almost all contract labourers in the plantation sector were unskilled workers – harvesters, tappers or sprayers. On plantations there were no contract workers at supervisory or skilled levels. There is high demand for contract workers by principal employers and contractors in Malaysia. From the workers’ point of view, ‘the inﬂux of foreign contract workers can be explained by income differentials between Malaysia and their home countries, geographical proximity and socio-cultural similarities’ (Lee and Sivananthiran 1996: 82–3).10 A possible reason why so many contract workers continue working with their present contractors is that they are often tied to their contractors through various beneﬁts which they provide. Of these beneﬁts, worker indebtedness through wage advances was highest in the plantation industries (83 per cent). Apart from wage advances, foreign contract workers are also tied to their contractors through loans for the payment of the government levy on foreign workers. Taking into consideration all these characteristics of foreign contract labour on plantations, it seems fair to conclude that immigrant labour ﬂows have a ‘wage-depressing effect’ and seriously undermine the policies to redress poverty and improve human capital (Mehmet 1984 cited in Meyanathan 1993: 378). On the basis of data collected in the Pal Melayu region, I am going to argue that in this area at least the decisions of the majority of Tamil workers and their progeny not to continue as estate workers were ‘proactive’ ones (cf. Richmond 1994: 58–61). In contrast to explanations based on the combined operation of ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors (the former supported by human rights advocates for instance and the latter by spokespersons for the management), which are largely reactive considerations, the dynamics and scattering of Pal Melayu’s Indian population has not been simply a knee-jerk reaction to certain situations. Instead it has been a positive, planned and concerted movement of variously informed and resourceful agents in a process. For a start, the small number and other socio-economic characteristics of Indians from the 1960s still working on Pal Melayu supports such an interpretation. In this light let us examine the data of those original (i.e. 1962–3) families whose descendants have continued to work on Pal Melayu.

Tamilian workers on Pal Melayu and other estates of the region Among the descendants of resident Tamilians on Pal Melayu, the ﬁrst one I met was Paramsivan alias Elappan at the house of teacher Muniandy.11 Paramsivan was born on Pal Melayu of rubber tapper parents, Ramasamy

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and Kanamma. Teacher Muniandy is the son of Kanamma’s brother, Subramaniam, and is married to Kanamma’s daughter Patamma, Paramsivan’s sister (see Figure 3.1). Kanamma, teacher Muniandy’s father’s sister (also mother-in-law), had wanted the alliance to continue by asking for teacher Muniandy’s daughter’s hand in marriage to Paramsivan. But teacher Muniandy refused the proposal because he thought consanguineal marriages to be undesirable since they led to ‘lowered intelligence in the progeny of such unions’. Paramsivan is a contractor on Pal Melayu. The contract workers under him can be plotted out according to the diagram below (Figure 3.2). One kinsmen-couple working for Paramsivan is his sister Ramai and her husband Arumugam. The contractor as well as all workers under him are provided with accommodation in the labour lines of Pal Melayu. In the interviews with the contractor’s gang I found conﬁrmation of some of the macro-level characteristics of contract labour on estates. Demographic factors – most prominently either the old age of the earning couples or a large number of dependent children – were foremost among reasons militating against a move outside estates. Following such characteristics were low levels of education and, in general, a certain lack of enterprise among household heads. It is quite revealing that besides relatives, AdiDravida Tamilians also formed part of the core of an Indian labour contractor’s gang on Pal Melayu and other estates in the region. As has been already noted by a number of scholars, and as we shall discuss in more detail later, there is a broad correlation among estate Tamils between caste status (i.e. Adi-Dravida Tamilians) and indices of backwardness, such as low educational levels and poverty. In the context of Tamilian labour still resident on Pal Melayu and other estates of the region, their proclivity to

Figure 3.1 Teacher Muniandy’s kin

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Figure 3.2 Workers under Paramsivan

remain contract workers is one of the ‘involutionary’ characteristics of caste afﬁliation. The same ‘involutionary’ characteristic of kinship is manifest in the continued stay on estates by the kin-related gang-core of Pal Melayu contractors like Paramsivan.12 On the peripheries of the contractor’s gang are located Bangladeshi and Indonesian labourers who, though more numerous than Tamilians, are eminently transient. I have discussed ‘relatives’ as the core of contractors’ gangs and the contractors are by and large non-Brahmin rather than Adi-Dravida. Among these ‘relatives’ on the estate there is the proclivity on the part of younger members of the household to have jobs in factories outside the estate and on the part of head of the household senior members (harvesters and carriers themselves) to own houses in a taman (new residential settlement) opposite Pal Melayu. A case in point is the network of Padyachee households shown in Figure 3.3, descendants of old residents of Pal Melayu (Doraisamy Thaccan and Kuppusamy Iyer) whom I had known in the early 1960s. EGO (Arumugam) owns a house in Taman Kilaran where his newly married son, Devrayan, who is a factory worker in Batang Berjuntai, stays. Among Tamilians still resident on the estates, there is a subgroup in parts of the Pal Melayu region (but not on Pal Melayu itself) who have acquired ownership of dwellings on the estates. These may be either

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Figure 3.3 Padyachee households

contract labourers or pay-roll workers, though my impression is that the majority is of the latter type. Again, the majority of these house owners on estates are themselves retired estate workers but one or more members of their households may continue to work on the estate. (There is no stipulation – legal or otherwise – that a member of such homeowner households must work on the estate.) The home ownership scheme for estate and mine workers was introduced by the late Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak, in 1970 and implemented in 1973. ‘Unfortunately, the scheme died with the last Premier, after having been implemented in 17 estates’ (Aliran Monthly 1994, 14(11): 21). The Malaysian Human Rights Report also cites the Sun Magazine (4 July 1996) to the effect that ‘to date only 33 out of the more than 1,000 plantations in the country have implemented it’ and it pronounces the scheme to be a failure (MHRR 1998: 65). Although the Selangor State Executive Council announced a policy in August 1991 requiring estate owners to implement house ownership schemes for their workers, the policy is voluntary rather than mandatory and most plantation owners have not been observing it. In January 1999, I met two informants, one an estate senior conductor who has risen from the rank of a tapper and the other a retired oil palm estate worker, who gave me details of the house ownership scheme implemented in the Pal Melayu region by the Sime Darby13 group of plantation owners (a Malaysian corporation). The senior conductor belongs to Selangor River Estate and the retired worker to Tennamaram Estate. The

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schemes in both the estates were similar in details. Some details of the Tennamaram Estate House Ownership Scheme are as follows: • • • • • •

House measurement: 40´ǂ 80´ Total cost of house: M$10,500 Company’s contribution: M$500 Down payment: M$3,000 Monthly payment (over ﬁfteen years): M$63.30 per month Loan from government (fund at 5 per cent interest): M$7,000

It is difﬁcult to provide a precise qualitative picture of the mobility and well-being associated with the joining of the estate house ownership scheme, but I would like to reproduce qualitative evidence gathered by interview with M. Subramaniam, the retired oil palm worker from Tennamaram estate. M. Subramaniam (EGO) was born in Malaysia, of parents who were Public Works Department workers, in 1937. He belongs to the Parayan caste. His parents relocated to the Tennamaram Estate after retirement from the Public Works Department in 1957. EGO and his wife began working life as oil palm workers on this estate. They have eight children: four boys and four girls. Of the two married sons, one is an electrical engineer in a factory near Kuala Lumpur. He was formerly a lecturer in a technical institute. The second married son works in a ﬁnance company. Of the two unmarried sons, both living with EGO, one is learning automobile engineering and the other is a kind of apprentice priest. Of the two married daughters, one works in a factory for television assembly and the other is a housewife. One unmarried daughter is working as a nurse in the estate clinic and the second one is studying at university. EGO is proud of the accomplishments of his children but is conscious of his own efforts involved in their education and training. Although both he and his wife were estate workers, their earnings were meagre. Therefore, says EGO, in 1972 he left the job on the estate and went to Pahang where be became a contractor. From there he went to Gemas and then to Singapore. In Singapore he worked initially as a labourer on a housing estate and then as an oil drill worker at the port. He also did a stint of ship repairing. All through this time his wife and children stayed on in Tennamaram Estate and his wife continued to work. EGO sent money to his family and visited them twice or thrice every month. EGO has studied up to Standard 7th (Tamil) and up to Form 2 in secondary school (Malay). Later both he and his wife studied at night school. EGO attributes his sound educational and economic status to proper planning, including the joining and completion of the house ownership scheme. He also points to the inﬂuence of devotional songs and other religious literature in Tamil, which he made available to his children from an early age. Lord Murugan is their family deity. The above case is fairly typical of the mobility aspirations and planning (therefore ‘proactive’ factors) among house owners in the Pal Melayu region. However, as pointed out earlier, only a very small percentage of

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those who have stayed back on the estates have been provided with housing under schemes like the one discussed above. The majority of Tamilians still residing on the estates therefore rate lowest on the scale of scattering and dynamics of the last thirty years. A useful way of looking at the social dynamics among Tamilians working on estates graduating from proletarian status to that of house owners is to discern a shift from the gemeinschaft of the earlier community life to the gesellschaft of an associational pattern of living, where community and neighbourhood ties are not solely determined on primordial (kinship and recruiting network) bases. An even more powerful and pervasive move in the same direction is the membership in the People’s Credit Cooperative Society, Batang Berjuntai, by an increasing number of estate workers in the Pal Melayu region. However, as I propose to show, even this move is community-oriented, reﬂecting the long socialisation of the people into estate gemeinschaft, rather than being individualistic. The following is a brief account of the present status, founding and expansion of the People’s Credit Cooperative Society (in Malay, ‘Koperasi Kredit Rakyat Berhad’ or KKR for short) to highlight its role in promoting self-reliance among its members through collective self-help mechanisms introduced initially by an outside agency.14 As from 31 December 1997, the KKR was organised into thirty-four communities with a total membership of 1,924. Its total savings stood at M$1,280,127.40 with outstanding loans at M$694,028.56 and total loans availed since inception at M$2.3 million. It owns a single-storey building and one acre of land in Batang Berjuntai. Since 1985 onwards it has had no outside funding. The founding of KKR in the Batang Berjuntai region as a pioneering Cooperative Credit Society in Malaysia goes back to 1970 when four people – Fr. C, Fatimah, John and Luke – came to Getah Estate’s (a pseudonym for the Java Selangor Estate) local parish church training centre to show a ﬁlm to estate workers. The ﬁlm was about how credit unions helped to develop people in the Fiji Islands. Even before the screening of the ﬁlm, which enthused a large number of people on Getah Estate, some of the estate workers were known to this group of promoters (members of the parish social action group) because they had started a tuition class for the estate’s children and a savings scheme among them. In 1970, a few days after the movie showing which generated the demand for a credit union among the adults of Getah Estate, seven sessions of about two hours duration each were conducted for the people, all of whom were estate workers. These sessions were held at night for their convenience. The course touched upon the rationale of credit unions, management and simple accounting. This is now known as the pre-membership course. The ﬁrst credit union was formed on the Getah Estate in 1971 with thirty-three members. Finance for the ﬁrst projects was obtained in the form of seed money from a religious congregation through the parish priest. To ensure con-

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tinuity of its projects, the group also tapped other foreign sources of funding. It was able to get some funds for three years (1972–4) for the salaries of one full-timer and two part-timers and for promotion, training and education programmes. The need for more training was badly felt by the group. Two of the group’s members were sent to Searsolin in the Philippines for further training in credit unions in 1971. Prior to this, in 1970, three members had already been to Bangalore in south India for a course in social action. Although the starting point of the programmes of the group was economic, members now wanted to offer an integrated programme rather than just an economic one. The group also started to popularise its idea of a credit union among the neighbouring estates. A seminar for youth on economic cooperation was held with representatives from seven estates. Three of these estates later extended invitations to the promoters to speak on the subject to their people. As a result two other credit unions were formed. Further expansion of the credit union was hampered by law. To have a legal status, all organisations, associations and bodies have to be registered with the government. Under the Thrift and Loan Cooperative Law, the Getah Credit Cooperative Society Limited was registered in October 1974. The Society was given a 5-mile radius for operation. In its early phases the Society was heavily dependent on the support of the parish priest, the availability of paltry funds from foreign sources and the activities of the promoters. From 1974 to 1977 its membership stagnated at forty-two members. The two other cooperatives were also not successful. Sometime in 1976, however, three members of the group decided to come together for a review and were able to identify two lessons. First, they could no longer function as a church- or parish-based organisation, and second, a priest should not be the leader but an advisor only. These three members transferred their ofﬁce out of the parish premises into a small rented oneroom ofﬁce in town, which cost them M$40 a month. This move marked in a symbolic way the ‘breaking away’ of the group from dependency towards selfreliance. In the meantime, both membership and volunteers for promotional work showed an increase. Three new credit cooperatives were organised. However, the real spurt in the activities of the society and its growth towards the KKR came in 1979 when the Batang Berjuntai Credit Cooperative Society became part of a national cooperative movement by joining the Credit Union Promotion (CUP) Club. It now had an extended radius of operation of 25 miles. Because of the good performance of the Society in subsequent years, its area of operation was extended to cover the state of Selangor in 1982 and its name changed to Koperasi Kredit Rakyat (KKR) Berhad, Batang Berjuntai. This was the biggest leap taken by the Society, which now came to be regarded as the pioneer cooperative credit society in the whole of Malaysia. The above history of the growth and expansion of KKR should not, however, gloss over certain facts which restrict its range and area of operation

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besides giving rise to internal conﬂicts. The poverty of rural people, especially the estate workers, is the chief constraining factor. For example, at the annual general meeting of the Society in 1981, the delegates adopted a resolution to appeal to the Registrar of Cooperatives for permission to amend the by-laws. The Society had so far been operating under a single by-law for credit cooperatives only. It was then proposed that a multipurpose by-law (like that of multi-purpose cooperative society) should replace the existing arrangement. It would have allowed the members as an organisation to legally venture into other cooperative projects. But this move was not successful. To quote Lim Chin Chin’s informant: However, we have remained a credit cooperative because we do not have enough savings yet. We must not rush. We must move slowly, according to the pace of the people. This is, after all, a people’s cooperative and they must be able to run it themselves. We are not like the other organisations where they take money from the people and the people have no say or participation in the organisation. No, we are not like that! (Lim 1983: 86) Even earlier, the society was hamstrung by ﬁnancial scarcity. In 1973 – soon after the Society’s formation in Getah Estate – it was found infeasible to give each member a loan of M$3000 as down payment for a workerowned housing scheme. And though one of KKR’s active promoters, Mr Jankey Raman, gave an enthusiastic interview in 1984 (Malaysia Straits Times, 15 February, 1984) about the successful working of the KKR and ‘the tappers breaking out of debt cycle’, within four years the same gentleman was completely disillusioned, and complained of ‘loan payments exceeding salaries’ (New Straits Times, 8 September 1988). He broke away from KKR and formed a non-proﬁt company called Comdari (Community Development and Research Institute) to ‘carry out a survey on the socioeconomic conditions of 10 estates and aiming to identify unemployed young people for self-help projects’. The Institute was ‘not a workers union, not a consumer association and not a charitable organization, although Comdari comprises elements of all three’ (New Straits Times, 11 May 1988).15 The primary objective of groups like this was, like that of the human rights groups, poverty alleviation, particularly among (Indian) estate workers. The KKR is a good example of what Partha Chatterjee, in another context, has called ‘social capital and civic community’ (Chatterjee 1998: 280). In so far as people in the Pal Melayu region themselves and this ethnographer trace some of roots of the cooperative credit society on estates to the rotating credit associations among the plantation proletariat (Jain 1970: 164–74), the KKR epitomises the growth of gesellschaft from gemeinschaft and a simultaneous co-existence of the two (for the latter point see Worsley et al. 1978: 342). However, this mechanism, in both its form and substance, remains a feature of the community life of the poor and an

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apt illustration of what the anthropologist Sol Tax has called ‘penny capitalism’ (Tax 1953). The association between institutions like the RKK and poverty is singularly revealed by the fact that it is primarily those Indian Malaysians continuing to be estate workers and those of the lower caste and income-groups living on estate fringes and town slum settlements that comprise the bulk of its membership. These are precisely the populations and communities which directly respond adversely to inﬂationary pressures in the wider economy. The only kind of security net available to them is the gemeinschaft of kinship, caste and neighbourhood or the patronage of a settlement developer like Nizam Krishnan (see below). Their persistence conﬁrms the existence of an Indian proletariat low down on the scale of scattering and dynamics in our sense. There is little evidence of entrepreneurship, a condition that some authors (cf. Jeyakumar 1993) generalise for the Indian poor in Malaysia as a whole. The same body of opinion also condemns – unfairly and without substantiation in my view – the growth of the individual and small group entrepreneurship as a solution to the problem of the Indian poor. As I propose to show in the following sections, individual and small group entrepreneurship is both a present phenomenon and a future development among a good proportion of the increasing number of Malaysian Indians in the Pal Melayu region who have cut themselves loose from the estates.

Ex-estate workers in Pal Melayu region The largest number of my respondents during the revisit ﬁeldwork belonged to former estate worker households in the Pal Melayu region. In terms of geographical location within the region they could be divided into two broad categories: (a) those settled in tamans (new residential settlements) across the Kuala Selangor to Batang Berjuntai road, facing old-established estates, and (b) those settled in the older towns of Kuala Selangor and Batang Berjuntai. A common occupational feature of the majority of employed ex-estate labourers in category (a) and of a smaller number in category (b) was their newly achieved status of blue-collar workers in industries – mainly electronics, textiles and construction. These industrial workers were both men and women, a gender distribution that is reminiscent of their past as estate labourers.16 The trend of gravitating towards blue-collar occupations from jobs requiring manual labour (tapping, harvesting, collecting and weeding) on estates is also borne out by macrolevel statistics for working-class Indians in Malaysia. At the latter level there are two indicators of this trend. First, there has been a considerable fall, from 45.5 per cent in 1967 to 21.8 per cent in 1980, in the number of Indian estate workers as a proportion of the total estate worker population (Puthucheary 1993). Second, the share of Indians in employment as production workers has increased from 8.6 per cent in 1970 to 11.4 per cent in 1980 (Sivalingam 1993: 390). This mobility within the working-class

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category is a prominent feature of non-estate settlements of Indian Malaysians in the Pal Melayu region. This is a reﬂection largely of proactive decisions to leave residence on the estates. Further, in all my interviews with respondents in categories (a) and (b) of these settlers, their ‘emic’ (i.e. insider) view emphasised the positive aspect of this migration and change. Objectively too, judged against certain primary indices of socio-economic change and mobility, education, general well-being (including health status), gender relations and recreational activities, the ex-estates workers of the Pal Melayu region register development and an evolutionary thrust. With this category of the Indian population in the forefront, we may again pose the question about their scattering and dynamics, namely, what is the pattern of mix here between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft and of the transition from one to the other? Let us note the variations in this respect, and to do so return to our subclassiﬁcation (a) and (b). In category (a) we place all those ex-estate workers who have bought land and built houses in the area across the Batang Berjuntai to Kuala Selangor road fronting the estates. Here there is a mix of housing between property developers like Nizam Krishnan and those who have been patronised by them. Kampong Java Selangor or Kampong Nizam is a good example. Here class stratiﬁcation is steep between property-developers and settlers. The latter are poor people, usually of Adi-Dravida castes. But even among such groupsettlements, there are more egalitarian communities like those of Taman Srikota developed by a small cooperative called Koprasi Kota. This cooperative was started in 1974 by some enterprising workers on Pal Melayu, including school teachers Pachiappan and Ponnusamy. Koprasi Kota obtained 23 acres of land in the vicinity of Holmwood Estate, sufﬁcient to build 194 homes. The chairman of this cooperative (Krishnan alias Muniandy) seemed very much a ‘ﬁrst among equals’ (primus inter pares). Unlike Nizam Krishnan, his house and compound in Taman Sri Kota was not much larger or more ostentatious than the dwellings of other members. Also the settlers were by and large higher caste and educated people, though the cooperative did have members of the Adi-Dravida castes also. The cooperative had about a thousand members in the late 1970s but gradually people moved away after making money on land and house speculation, and in 1999 it had only 400 members. The above is an example of what we may call collective or group entrepreneurship. But the majority of ex-estate taman-dwellers are individual entrepreneurs. The typical life-history of such people is as follows. With the shrinking of estate acreages beginning in the 1970s, there were retrenchments on the large estates. At the same time plots of land were sold off by the large estates to property developers, cooperatives and individuals. The individuals had received pensions from their employers and these. along with their other savings, were invested in buying up plots of land. Gradually they built up houses through loans from banks. Not only were these people ‘proactive’ settlers but they seemed to be ﬂourishing in a

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material sense. Their standards of living are a far cry from the proletarian status of estates labourers. Besides younger family members becoming blue-collar workers in factories, the middle-aged and old ex-workers have taken up self-employment as ﬂower-growers, shopkeepers and cattlerearers. As we shall see later, they did not have to go through a phase of slum-dwelling in government-provided longhouses. To that extent, the taman-dwellers have certainly attained socio-economic mobility. As one proceeds from category (a) to category (b), namely, migrants from estates to nearby towns of Batang Berjuntai and Kuala Selangor, the story is one of even faster growth of individual entrepreneurship among ex-estate workers.17 Our discussion so far has illustrated that economic conditions or market forces have impinged directly on the adaptation to new surroundings by exestate labour, and that the end of insulation and isolation of living on estates has opened up the arena for linking their lives with undercurrents of politics in the region and the nation. These trends are put into stronger relief when we consider the ﬁnal category of Tamilians affected by the scattering and dynamics.

Ex-estate workers in squatter settlements near Klang and Kuala Lumpur Studies of Indian squatter settlements in Peninsular Malaysia are few and far between (Rajoo 1985 and 1993). In the following account my endeavour is to trace some of those individuals and families who have become squatter settlers in Kuala Lumpur and Klang Valley after being born and brought up in the Pal Melayu region and thereafter migrating to industrial areas. Second, I am interested in the mutual interactions and perceptions between those in the Pal Melayu region and those settled in the urban peripheries, namely, in Sungei Way and Padang Jawa near Klang and Kampong Muniandy, Kampong Gandhi and Kampong Bengali near Kuala Lumpur. My ﬁeld data from these settlements is neither as detailed nor as intimate as from the Pal Melayu region since it is based only on a few ﬁeld visits to these areas from Kuala Selangor. People from the Pal Melayu region moved to these new settlements partly because they did not want to do hard labour on estates but preferred the more comfortable work in factories, and partly because many new industries were opened in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the vicinity of Kuala Lumpur and Klang. Many of the squatters were initially allotted accommodation in government-built longhouses (rumah pangang) and placed on a waiting list to be eventually moved into modern low-cost houses under a squatters’ resettlement programme introduced by the State Development Corporation. The local political leaders cultivated the squatters for votes. Quite a few of the illegal (hara) houses had been renovated and they looked solid and well-appointed. The front portions of most of these

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settlements were inhabited by Malays. Rajoo Rangasamy, who had done fieldwork in Kampong Gandhi (pseudonym Kampong Kasturi), accompanied me and remarked how since 1981–2 a change had come about (concretisation of illegal housing and building of metalled roads). In Taman Sri Santosa, Kuala Lumpur, live Ganesan’s extended family; all of them have left the Pal Melayu region. The following discussion details their location and jobs (as well as kinship with Ganesan) (see Figure 3.4). Muniandy is a watchman in a factory. Prabhakaran has a lorry and is in the transport business. His wife is a factory worker. Similarly, all of Muniandy’s sons who were settled outside Sri Santosa are in the transport business, having taxies or lorries, while their wives are factory workers. The older women look after the children while they are of school age. Sometimes the younger women run small businesses. The ties of all these people to India are very tenuous: they have bought no land or properties there but about 60 to 70 per cent of them have visited India. None of their relatives are working on estates. Even marriages with Indian men or women are few and far between, except that the number of incoming Indian wives is larger than outgoing Malaysian Tamil girls. Marriages among relatives are still common. Many festive customs are observed even in ﬂat-living, for example sugar cane was bought at Pongal. Secular festivals like Tamil Tirunal are not observed here, hence there is no solidarity like that of estate workers. Life has improved as regards ﬁnancial and economic conditions but the older

Figure 3.4 Ganesan’s kin

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people regret that they have no land to cultivate. They also complain of having to cope with only television and talking as recreation, and that there is a generation gap. According to information provided by this family, at least 40 per cent of the ex-estate-working Indians are still in squatter settlements. Although it takes two generations to move from estates to ﬂats, it takes only one generation to move from squatter settlements to ﬂats. There is hardly any inter-ethnic mixing in social activities, but within the Indian group neighbours join in life-cycle rituals. There is a temple, which provides some sort of focus for Indian activities. The family’s move to this place was the joint result of government help and the activities of private developers. Kampong Padang Jawa is another locality, near Klang, where in the midst of a densely populated industrial area a number of migrants from Pal Melayu have built houses on a joint grant of land. There are no individual titles yet. The land has been sold to the present occupants by Malays to whom the government had allotted it (as part of the afﬁrmative action policy for ‘sons of the soil’). According to P. Venugopal, son of Doraisamy of Division B in Pal Melayu, there are forty-one lots in this locality out of which only ﬁve are now held by Malays. The rest are all Indian-owned. There are so many migrants here from Pal Melayu that the particular street on which Venugopal has built his house is known as ‘Pal Melayu Lorong’. Venugopal has relatives in the Pal Melayu region. For example, his sister Mariai is the wife of the late Arumugam ‘Chetty’, the brother of ‘Lucky’ Maniam. He has a large kindred (including his wife’s relatives) in the Pal Melayu region. He mentioned with pride his relationship with Periasamy, father of Munusamy (a government ofﬁcer who has achieved the greatest mobility among the Pal Melayu boys; see below), and with teacher Muniandy. P. Venugopal is a second-generation Malaysian-born. He succeeded his father as a kangany on Pal Melayu while his father (Doraisamy) went back to India and settled in the village of Damal. Venugopal became a subcontractor on Pal Melayu itself and invested his life-savings and gratuity there in May 1990. His children (two grown-up sons and several daughters) with their mother moved ﬁrst to Padang Jawa. Venugopal came after his retirement but is still working as a security guard in the RJR tobacco company. His sons, working for the Carlsberg Beer Co. and running a transport business, live in Taman Santosa. Venugopal has eighteen grandchildren. Although life in the new locality is highly impersonal, he does not mind it because he came here with all his family. Venugopal came to know about this land from his son who had a job nearby. His son, in turn, negotiated the deal through a teacher who was a land-broker. There is no ‘temple facility’ here and so the family has its own puja-room. The Indian colony at Sungei Way is probably the most representative of the results of squatters’ resettlement programmes introduced by the State Development Corporation. There are several blocks of modern low-cost houses. Let me take the example of Annamalai, the son of Tata Vatiyar

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(‘grandfather teacher’ of Pal Melayu), who belongs to the Padyachi caste (his wife is a Gounder). He came to Sungei Way in 1981 before his retirement. Like the case discussed in the previous paragraph, the departure from Pal Melayu was caused by the fact that all his children (one son and six married daughters) were working in industries in this area. His only son, Ambalgan, started working after leaving school at the Lower Certiﬁcate of Education in 1979. He was an active member of the Tamil Youth Bell Club and served as a secretary for Senator Mahalingam for ten years. He is now working as a broker and travel agent living in his own house in Batang Berjuntai. Ambalgam accompanied us to his parents’ house in Sungei Way, having informed them of our time of arrival on the phone. Apparently, Annamalai’s family was rich enough to have a phone and also provided sumptuous rice and curry vegetarian food for all of us. The only kinsman living nearby is a married daughter of this old couple. Annamalai received a public award (there was a picture in the drawing room) for social work done in the Pal Melayu region. Like the informant in the previous case, he also proudly declared that he has seventeen grandchildren (all daughters’ children). Again, there is no community temple in the locality and the couple have a puja-room where pictures of Mariamman and Muniswaran are installed. The old couple maintain contacts with India, and the wife visited her family’s village last year. But they deﬁnitely feel lonely here compared to on the estate. There was, they think, more freedom on the estate. The wife especially doesn’t like where she now lives. There may be more economic mobility than before, but estate life was preferable. They have bought land in Bukit Cheraka beside this house and from oil palm in that land they earn about M$300–400 per month. Undoubtedly those ex-estate workers from Pal Melayu who have moved farthest away are also amongst the most economically mobile. The case of Muniandy alias Masilamani, son of the late Perumal Kangany of Pal Melayu (ex-immigrant from Natal), illustrates this. Masilamani has bought a house in the Sunway locality of Sungei Way near Petaling Jaya. It is a low-cost government house which cost M$45,000. He has now converted his tworoom house into a four-room apartment. Occupationally he is a technical aircraft executive with Lufthansa. In getting this job he was helped by his educational qualiﬁcations up to Form V through schooling in Kuala Selangor while his father was a kangany on Pal Melayu. He has two daughters, one of whom is studying for an MA in History at the University of Malaysia and the other one is training as a dietician also in Kuala Lumpur. Fifty-year-old P. Munisamy, son of Periasamy Kangany of Pal Melayu, is perhaps the most economically mobile second-generation product from Pal Melayu. He is now Principal Assistant Secretary in the International Division of the Ministry of Human Resources, Kuala Lumpur. Born in 1951 in Pal Melayu, Munisamy studied at the estate Tamil school (1958–63), at the secondary school in Kampong Kuantan (1964–65) and then, from mid-

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1965, in the newly opened English medium school in Batang Berjuntai, completing Form V in 1969. During the riots of May 1969 the school was closed for two months at which time his father suggested that the entire family go back to India where Periasamy Kangany bought land in 1970. However, at this stage Munisamy’s elder brother, Pachiappan (a clerk on Bukit Rotan Estate), prevailed upon his father not to take that step. Pachiappan also decided to enrol Munisamy in a private school for High School Certiﬁcate (two-years pre-university course). This was the Vanto Academy run by two Malayali Indians. After 50 per cent discount, Munisamy had to pay a fee of M$20 per month. His total cost of living in Kuala Lumpur came to about M$60–70 per month. Munisamy was the ﬁrst Pal Melayu resident to enter the university. He was given a loan of M$1500 per year for three years. (He has paid back all this amount with interest.) While in Kuala Lumpur he stayed with a Malayali couple, Mr and Mrs Fernandes, who were the parents of a classmate. He paid them M$40 per month for his keep. To meet his expenses Munisamy gave private tuition in addition to the loan. He recalls that the attitude of Pal Melayu estate staff was absolutely non-supportive. After joining government service, Munisamy helped his parents to move out of the estate and buy a house in a taman opposite Pal Melayu. He and his family visit his parents regularly; one of his sisters is a teacher in the estate primary school and another works as a creche ayah. Munisamy is helping the latter ﬁnancially to buy a house. He says that he suffers from no inferiority complex because of his estate background and continuing relations with kinsmen on or near estates in the Pal Melayu region. Munisamy has already invested in an apartment in Sepang costing M$90,000 and a plot of land 40´ǂ80´ for M$40,000. At the age of 27 he married his wife Radha from Kuala Lumpur on 22 January 1978. It was a love-marriage, and they now have a daughter (aged 20 years) and a son (aged 17 years). The family went to the United States fully ﬁnanced by the government. The daughter is completing her degree and is planning to get an MBA in the USA. The son wants to be an engineer.

Analysis and implications Much recent writing on Indians in West Malaysia concentrates on them as a ‘poverty group’. The human rights activists and radical economists have written about either the Indians still living and working on the plantations or those who are squatters in the vicinity of large towns, some of whom have graduated to the status of ﬂat-dwellers in large blocks of buildings built up and sold by state corporations and private developers. The middle ground comprising those who have moved into tamans 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

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to re-study and report on in this discussion of culture and economy in a sector of the South East Asian Indian diaspora. I shall revert to the economy towards the conclusion, but let me focus now on aspects of caste, religion and kinship among Tamilians in the Pal Melayu region. By and large Indian scholars, including former estatedwellers who are now academics and activists in urban Malaysia, writing on caste among estate workers in Malaysia, have taken an essentialist view of the institution of caste. Related to this essentialist view and its exclusion of a historical and contextual perspective is their amnesia about the interpretation and use of the institution of caste by active agents in the social ﬁeld, namely the population of former estate-dwellers who have chosen and planned to move away from large plantations. Certain situational features need to be ﬁrmly kept in view. First, we need to distinguish between the excluded and deprived people of the Adi-Dravida castes living at the sufferance of estates, who had been kept in that condition largely by estate managements for their own advantage and the urban and suburban Adi-Dravidas who enjoyed a higher socio-economic proﬁle, including monopolies of cleaning and scavenging services in towns. The latter group started with an advantage in adapting to the emancipatory forces unleashed by the break-up of large estates in the region. They had been active participants in municipal committees and had enjoyed considerable economic leverage in the grant of civic contracts. In Batang Berjuntai town, for instance, the Tamil cinema hall and bus services are owned by members of the Adi-Dravida caste. Second, as I discussed in my earlier study, even on the estates the purity–impurity opposition between the higher (non-Brahmin) and lower (Adi-Dravida) castes had considerably reduced. Members of all castes irrespective of their ritual status had contributed from their wages money to build the central Mahamariamman temple on Pal Melayu. On collective festive occasions like Adi Tiruvila, estate workers sat for a feast in the temple premises irrespective of their caste status (Jain 1970: Chapter 9). This development reached its culmination during the current phase of the Tamilians’ emancipation from estates in the Pal Melayu region. Not only is Muniandy, the chairman of the Thandayundapani Temple Committee in Batang Berjuntai, a Parayan, but in both his perceptions and his reactions to caste questions he displays at once an intimate knowledge of the workings-out of caste distinctions in Tamil Nadu and an utter disdain for the claim of being an original high caste by the non-Brahmin Vanniars who were the ‘dominant caste’ on Pal Melayu (ibid.: 347–49).

Caste war There is a caste war going on among Indians in Malaysia. Let me delineate the general process and recent history. The estates had only non-Brahmins and Adi-Dravidas and no Brahmins. The companies employing Indians

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partly through design and partly as a fall-out of recruiting procedures did not interfere with the status quo of Indian villages: the non-Brahmin and Adi-Dravida division was ﬁrmly entrenched and it helped the management to run the estate. The Vanniars were the ‘dominant caste’ and Adi-Dravidas were the ‘subordinate castes’ (Jain 1970). That caste was increasingly an aspect of culture rather than of social stratiﬁcation per se was broadly true of the isolated and insulated circumstances of estate living. With the post-1969 changes and the increasingly powerful stream of Indians marching out of the estates, the ‘djinni was freed from the bottle’. Opportunities were there for the taking for any or every of the Tamilian castes, though of course because of the environment the non-Brahmins had a head-start compared to the Adi-Dravidas. But the situation has rapidly changed over the 1980s and 1990s. Of course there has been economic mobility across the board for estate Indians. But there has also been important socio-economic mobility. The earlier caste-based kindred-aroundkanganies – of the non-Brahmins and the Paraiyans – have broken down and the former estate population has become economically and geographically mobile as well as scattered. The ‘head-start’ by the non-Brahmins is increasingly being neutralised in the sense that, in the new circumstances, the Adi-Dravidas have caught up or are very much in the process of catching up. What happens to the culture of caste in this context is extremely instructive. It would be a triviality to say that the Adi-Dravidas have ‘Sanskritised’. The latter of the Indian variety just does not ﬁt. For one thing, the AdiDravidas have made a massive inroad into the Tamilian ritual life, if not actually appropriated it. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that the non-Brahmins in strictly public religious (ritual and temple) terms are existing at the sufferance of the culturally mobile and high-proﬁle Adi-Dravidas. The entire history and present organisation of the Thandayudapani temple in Batang Berjuntai epitomises that process. While the non-Brahmins have concentrated on entrepreneurship basically in the economic sense, the cultural entrepreneurship of Adi-Dravidas has ﬂourished and taken a number of varied forms. On the one hand, they have become managers of the ritualistic and social (e.g. marriage registration) functions of the new temple; on the other hand, teachers of their castes – themselves educated ones like Rajagopal – have undertaken in a manipulative and entrepreneurial way to ‘motivate’ the youth (especially children) of their own caste but with an eye on individual mobility, popularity and leadership. The ideological and political umbrella under which this upwardly mobile Adi-Dravida category is functioning is provided squarely by Dravidian Tamilian ideology, rhetoric and organisation. In this respect the understanding between Muniandy (temple chairman), Nallathamby and Parasuraman (a local political spokesperson) and Rajagopal (ambitious teacher of the ‘paradigm shift’ fame) is remarkable. The rhetoric and vanity of Muniandy is worth documenting.

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He discusses the Vanniars as Telugu refugees (rather than self-claimed rulers) in Tamil Nadu – the titles Reddi, Naicker, Naidu, etc. he says are all from the Telugu country. The real Tamilians are the Adi-Dravidas. While on the one hand he connects himself up with Tamil Nadu, he also speaks of the earlier hauteur of the Ceylon (Jaffna) Tamils against Indian Tamilians (especially the lower castes) and the present 180 degree turn which impels the Jaffna Tamils to show solidarity with their Indian counterparts. Many are the stories of the supercilious attitudes of the Ceylon Tamils but the non-Dravidas seem to have taken their revenge on the Ceylon Tamils. According to Muniandy, in Colombo at the height of Sinhalese–Jaffna Tamil conﬂict the former were beaten back (with long steel pipes) by a combination of Malayalees, Singhs, Telugus and Tamils (meaning Indian Tamils, again mainly Adi-Dravida) who came to their rescue. The Sinhalese raped and ravished the Jaffna Tamil and thus (to the great vicarious satisfaction of Muniandy) destroyed the hypocritical and supercilious ‘purity’ of their women. It was then that revenge had been taken and a new solidarity commenced between the Ceylon Tamils and the Indians. It is in this context that Prabhakaran has proved himself to be a real Tamilian hero whose tapes are popular among the Dravidian Tamils. In the same vein, Muniandy kept on praising and extolling Ambedkar. (I did not deliberately mention Pandithan because that would be embroiled in local politics rather than of meta-narrative or the Myth, which was the centrepoint of Muniandy’s rhetoric.) The element of so-called desanskritised sanskritisation in Muniandy’s knowledge system is a claim to the intricate knowledge of the caste system. Even the Parayans, he said, were divided into eight or nine hierarchical castes (what Rajagopal called ‘subcastes’) and Talis of various castes differed. (‘Did I know?’ – the rhetorical question he asked me.) They had got a gurukkal from India on hire. They called him gurukkal rather than the inferior term pusari (animal slaughter associated) as in north India. In other words, they were practising a Tamilian Great Tradition superior to the practices of north Indian or the northern-ward Telugus who had pretended to be rulers of the Tamils. Muniandy further said that though he knew about all the intricacies and the true origins of the caste system, he would not be so foolish as to mention these in public. Mentioning all this caste stuff in public ‘would lead to a big ﬁght’. Muniandy openly confessed that as marriage registrar he knew that inter-caste marriages were taking place galore. He slept over problemmarriages (pregnancies before marriage especially of inter-caste unions). Also the stigma of caste did not die out completely. Women of high caste married to low caste men when they reached the age of 35–45. (When the men were ageing, their wives still enjoyed health and youth superior to their husbands. They looked down upon the latter, and even told their children how their fathers were of a lower caste than them.)

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It is interesting to note the largely defensive and economic entrepreneurial (as opposed to cultural entrepreneurial) position taken by nonBrahmins like Ganesan and his brother Thangavelu. The latter is slightly reconciled though the former has had sallies in politics and in religion but continues to have an uneasy relationship with aggressive Dravidian Tamilism. (Notice that none of the Adi-Dravidian temple committee members came to my so-called ‘dialogue’ in the temple arranged by Ganesan and how the only person of that category who came was Rajgopal and was all the time challenging the Mahanandram people and their activities emphasising the lack of unity.) Another point to note is that Muniandy-type aggressive Tamilism helps him interact inter-ethnically. As representative of ‘true’ Indian type he is able to hold his own with Malays and Chinese and show down the so-called Indian Tamil of the high caste, grasping, greedy type. ‘holier than thou’, ‘purer than pure’. He is able to partially attain higher public credibility in an inter-ethnic context. For the Indian elites the best policy is to play down caste in public (though use it fully in private among themselves).18 While caste as the embodiment of social stratiﬁcation does not play a dominant role among Tamilians in Malaysia, the caste ascription to groups by birth and the practice, by and large, of caste or even subcaste endogamy is attributed to kinship, i.e. sondakarar status among those who inter-marry and express solidarity as kindred-style quasi-groups and networks. In this respect the situation of Tamilians radiating spatially from Pal Melayu is similar to what Yalman has called ‘micro-caste kindred’ in Sri Lanka (Yalman 1967). Here the elementary structures of kinship among Malaysian Tamils produce what may be described as ‘conservative’ social structure when the verb ‘to conserve’ is being used in a positive sense. This culture of caste premised on Tamil kinship (and afﬁnity) is an aspect of evolutionary trend in the Pal Melayu region. To give a concrete instance, the catering business of Ganesan is largely channelled along the lines of kindred-based networks in localities such as Batang Berjuntai itself, the various tamans fronting the estates of the Pal Melayu region and extending up to Rawang. The modernising conversion of older puberty ceremonies for girls (tiratti) into 21st birthday celebrations common among all ex-estate workers has meant a big boost for Ganesan’s catering business. Similarly, the attenuation of purity/impurity considerations co-existing with the bonus of esteem attached to a non-Brahmin caterer like Ganesan during celebration in the Adi-Dravida households has meant a certain twisting of the arms of an orthodox Hindu like Ganesan in the direction of reluctant, though avid (because proﬁtable), extension of business activities among the dalits (untouchables). The sentiment of kinship and endogamy is strong among economic entrepreneurs like Ganesan although the next generation of even non-Brahmin parents openly state their perception that caste endogamy and hypergamy etc. are doomed to extinction.

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Conclusion 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 post-1970s Malaysia led to a 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 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 to 10 per cent of the pre-1970s levels. As pointed out earlier, the impression that the ex-plantation labourers 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 outmigration from estates of groups and individuals who have become selfemployed 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 re-study 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

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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, sub-caste or caste endogamy, or even ethnic closure of all the marriages. We may, therefore, expect bigger socio-cultural changes in the Tamilian institutional 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.

Notes 1 According to the 1996 statistics the total Malaysian population was 20.56 million. Of these 19.65 million were Malaysians and 907,000 foreign nationals. The population of Peninsular Malaysia was 16.48 million, of Sabah 2.16 million and of Sarawak 1.92 million. Of these 12.13 million or 59 per cent were Bumiputeras (ethnic Malaysians), 5.3 million or 26 per cent Chinese and 1.52 million or 8 per cent Indians. The total number of Indians in Malaysia according to the 1991 Census was 1,313,588. The Indian population being dealt with in this account refers to Peninsular Malaysia unless otherwise stated. 2 It is worth noting that popular perceptions and stereotypes are based on the generalisation of comparisons within a class or occupational stratum. Thus the middle-class and professional Indians in Malaysia, such as university teachers, vociferously state that every Malay (Bumiputra) now aspires to be a millionaire. That such a possibility exists is supported by the Indian spokesmen by pointing out the proliferation of Malays at Associate Professor or higher levels in every academic department of the university. 3 The speciﬁc reference here is to my ethnographic study conducted in 1962–3 (Jain 1970) and my revisit to the same region (the Pal Melayu region) during December 1998 to March 1999. The revisit was sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi. We may note here an important chronological feature of the studies on the Indian poor in Malaysia. Without exception they all deal with the duration or aftermath of the recession in the Malaysian economy during the mid and late 1980s. Therefore the conclusions of these studies cannot be applied to the period of the re-study without utmost caution. 4 Figures for the resident Indian population (workers and non-workers) on Pal Melayu in 1998–9 are unfortunately not available, but projecting from the 1962 average of 6 members per household the total resident population of Indians on Pal Melayu in 1998–9 may not be more than 240. 5 The Indian population alone in Selangor and the Federal Territory, which encompasses Kuala Lumpur, accounts for 35.4 per cent of all Indians in the country (Aznam 1990: 17). 6 There is much truth in Gullick’s observation that considerably less has been written about the Malaysian oil palm industry than its older rubber industry (1981: 194). For example Mehmet (1988: 43) excludes oil palm ‘as a relatively new crop’ and Insan (1989) concentrates almost exclusively on rubber estates to delineate the condition of the Indian poor in Malaysia. The overemphasis on rubber estates to the neglect comparatively of conditions on oil palm plantations is likely to give a skewed picture, for, as Lucas and Verry (1996: 562)

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observe, ‘earnings on the rubber estates have hardly risen relative to the consumer price index, though this is less true of oil palm cultivation which has taken a growing share of estate employment’. Almost all the literature on the Indian poor in Malaysia cited earlier fails to differentiate between conditions on oil palm and rubber estates. 7 According to Lee and Sivananthiran (1996: 77), following a general decline in the 1970s, there has been a resurgence of contract labour since the recession of the mid-1980s. By 1990, its incidence had risen to 70 per cent in the construction industry (up from 64 per cent in 1980), to 13 per cent in the rubber plantation industry (up from 10 per cent in 1980) and to 35 per cent in the oil palm industry (up from 33 per cent in 1980). From the micro-ﬁgures obtained in Pal Melayu in 1998, this trend seems to have continued throughout the decade of the 1990s. 8 Contrast this with the population census of Pal Melayu (both labour and nonlabour population) in July 1962: Age-group

Percentage

0–13 14–25 26–45 46–65 66+

50.3 21.2 20.2 7.3 1.0

9 The ﬁndings of this survey are consistent with the ILO’s argument that contract labour plays an important role in industries subject to cyclical ﬂuctuation in production and demand (ILO 1996: 20). 10 The allusion to ‘socio-cultural similarities’ is almost deﬁnitely a euphemism for religion, i.e. Islam in the case of Indonesian and Bangladeshis. 11 For Muniandy, I have used the pseudonym Arokkiam (Jain 1970: 403–4). In my initial study he was a neo-literate rubber tapper. He is now a retired Tamil school headmaster living in Taman Mubibah. For his life history see below. 12 I have later mentioned the distinctive opposition between ‘evolutionary’ and ‘involutionary’ manifestations of Tamilian social institutions in the Pal Melayu region. 13 Sime Darby was previously a British company but is now in the hands of PERNAS, a local quasi-governmental body holding shares in trust for the Bumiputras. 14 The following account is based on interviews with ofﬁce-bearers of the KKR in Batang Berjuntai and on Annual Reports provided by them. For the history of KKR, a useful source is Lim Chin Chin (1983). 15 When I interviewed Mr Jankey Raman at Batang Berjuntai in January 1999, he had moved further in the direction of doing research and setting up an information bureau. His ofﬁce carried the banner of ‘Nationwide Human Development and Research Centre, Tingkat 1 (Mahligai Koperasi)’. 16 Even among resident estate labourers discussed in the previous section, the younger sons and daughters of house allottee older estate workers were increasingly drawn towards blue-collar industrial occupations. Such households enjoyed the bonus of getting free accommodation for their non-estate-working wards. 17 One should not overlook the existence, even in these relatively small towns, of slum-dwelling Indians. They are the real poor ex-estate workers who have either found no suitable alternative employment or have large families with small children to support. Some are physically disabled. They live precariously in makeshift dwellings erected on unauthorised land usually in the backyards of main markets.

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18 A really interesting aspect of the inter-ethnic understanding between AdiDravida or dalit Tamilians and the Malay Bumiputras is the conscious upholding by the former of the latter’s status as ‘sons of the soil’. The dalit Tamilians in Malaysia claim that in being the original inhabitants of their respective lands (India and Malaysia) the Adi-Dravidas and the Malays are alike and, therefore, deserving of their rulers’ status!

References and further reading Abdullah, F. H. (1997) ‘Afﬁrmative action policy in Malaysia: to restructure society, to eradicate poverty’, Ethnic Studies Report 15(2): 189–221. Aznam, S. (1990) ‘Ethnic Indians see Malaysia as home: new motherland’, Far Eastern Economic Review 7: 16–17. Brown, I. (1997) Economic Change in South East Asia: c.1830–1980, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Chatterjee, P. (1998) ‘Community in the East’, Economic and Political Weekly, 7–13 February, 33(6): 277–28. Gullick, J. (1981) Malaysia: Economic Expansion and National Unity, London: Ernest Benn. Horton, S., R. Kanbur and D. Mazumdar (1991) ‘Labour markets in an era of adjustment: evidence from 12 developing countries’, International Labour Review 130(5–6): 531–58. ILO (1996) Contract Labour, Report VI (1) to the International Labour Conference, 85th session, Geneva: ILO Insan (Institut Analisa Sosial [Malaysia]) (1989) Sucked Oranges: The Indian Poor in Malaysia, Petaling Jaya: Sun U Book Co. Jain, R. K. (1970) South Indians on the Plantation Frontier in Malaya, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. —— (1985) ‘Multi-ethnicity and overseas migration: the case of Tamils in Malaysia’, in A. D. Pant and S. Gupta (eds) Multi-ethnicity and National Integration: A PoliticoAnthropological View, Allahabad: Vohra Publishers. Jeyakumar, D. (1993) ‘The Indian poor in Malaysia: problems and solutions’, in K. S. Sandhu and A. Mani (eds), Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, Singapore: Times Academic Press. Jomo, K. S. and V. Kanapathy (1996) ‘Economic liberalization and labour in Malaysia: efﬁciency and equity considerations in public policy reform’, paper submitted to ILO Bangkok. Lee, K. and A. Sivananthiran (1996) ‘Contract labour in Malaysia: perspectives of principal employers contractors and workers’, International Labour Review 135(6): 75–91. Lim C. C. (1983) ‘A descriptive study of the community organization process of the Koperasi Kredit Rakyat Berhad, Batang Berjuntai, Selangor, Malaysia’, unpublished M.Sc. thesis in Social Work, Asian Social Institute, Manila. Lucas, R. E. B. and D. W. Verry (1996) ‘Growth and income distribution in Malaysia’, International Labour Review 135(5): 553–75. Mehmet, O. (1984) ‘Inter-racial labour migration, poverty and income distribution: the case of Peninsular Malaysia’, in Current Population Policy and Research in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur: Population Studies Unit, Faculty of Economics, University of Malaya.

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—— (1988) Development in Malaysia: Poverty, Wealth and Trusteeship, Petaling Jaya: Sun U Book Co. Meyanathan, S. (1993) ‘Ethnic socio-economic distribution: Indians in Malaysia’, in K. S. Sandhu and A. Mani (eds), Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, Singapore: Times Academic Press. MHHR (1998) Malaysian Human Rights Report, Kuala Lumpur: Vinlin Press. Mougin, J. M. (1993) ‘Imported labour problems faced by the plantation industry’, paper presented at SOCFIN managers meeting, 8–9 December, mimeographed. Puthucheary, M. (1993) ‘Indians in the public sector in Malaysia’, in K. S. Sandhu and A. Mani (eds), Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, Singapore: Times Academic Press. Rajakrishnan, R. (1987) Subculture of Poverty among Indians in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur: Percetakan Km. Rajoo, R. (1985) ‘Politics ethnicity and strategies of adaptation in an urban Indian squatter settlement in Peninsular Malaysia’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. —— (1993) ‘Indian squatter settlers: Indian rural–urban migration in West Malaysia’, in, K. S. Sandhu and A. Mani (eds), Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, Singapore: Times Academic Press. Richmond, A. H. (1994) Global Apartheid: Refugees, Racism and the New World Order, Toronto: Oxford University Press. Sandhu, K. S. (1993) ‘The coming of the Indians to Malaysia’, in K. S. Sandhu and A. Mani (eds), Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, Singapore: Times Academic Press. Sivalingam, A. (1993) ‘Economic problems and challenges facing the Indian community in Malaysia’, in K. S. Sandhu and A. Mani (eds), Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, Singapore: Times Academic Press. Tax, S. (1953) Penny Capitalism: A Guatemalan Indian Economy, Washington: Smithsonian Institute. Worsley, P. et al. (1978) Introducing Sociology, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Yalman, N. (1967) Under the Bo Tree: Studies in Caste, Kinship and Marriage in the Interior of Ceylon, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Chapter Title

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Diaspora and citizenship Forgotten routes of identity in Lanka Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake

The real problem with this point of view (pan Africanism) is the assumption that cultural and political boundaries should coincide, that the state should be a nation-state, and that the natural boundaries of the state are those of a common cultural community. Basil Davidson called it ‘the curse of the modern nation-state’ but he was never able to deﬁne the institutional nature of that curse. (Mahmood Mamdani 2000)

Sri Lanka is a land of many migrations, constituted by people from many diasporas – Indian, Arab, Chinese, European. Strategically situated at the intersection of major Asian trade routes, east and west, before the age of the jet engine and the arrival of the modern nation-state in the region, its ports provided sanctuary to travellers and trading communities plying back and forth from China to the subcontinent to Europe and the Middle East for centuries. From the early 1500s the island was colonized by competing European empires, starting with the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and ﬁnally the British, for about 150 years apiece, until independence in 1948. The travellers, visitors and colonizers were to leave behind an island of hybrid histories and ambivalent legacies. Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, was romanticized in the anthropological imagination and literature that dwelt extensively on the diversity of its inhabitants and their co-existence – until the pogrom of July 1983, which sharply divided the island’s two dominant communities. Since then the migrant routes of the Sinhalas and Tamils have been all but forgotten amidst a spiralling armed conﬂict, post-colonial nation-state building, and proliferating nationalist inventions of ‘pure’ ethnic identity and tradition. This chapter argues that in Sri Lanka, as in other post-colonial South Asian contexts where competing groups struggle for national authenticity, the discourse of ‘diaspora’ can be dangerous. Indeed the question of diaspora in an island as culturally mixed and hybrid as Ceylon/Sri Lanka is a corollary of the invention of the modern nation-state and territorialized identities, which determine entitlement of groups to citizenship and

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attendant rights and entitlements. Since the birth of nation-states in the region in 1947/8, identifying and naming a ‘diaspora’ community as such has signiﬁcant, serious political consequences, not the least of which is the question of citizenship, or who is or is not deﬁned to belong within the modern nation-state, and who is or is not entitled to equal treatment before the national law, to land rights etc. For ‘diaspora’ implies a negation of territorial-based identity and citizenship ( jus sol), the corner stone of modern national belonging within a sovereign territorial state. When deployed in South Asia the language of diaspora has a different resonance. The fact of being from somewhere else has and might serve to disable a historically migrant group’s claims to equality and citizenship, and has sometimes resulted in displacement and expulsion of migrant communities (e.g. Sri Lanka, Bhutan). In short, diaspora in context of many migrations is a corollary of when and how we draw a time line to construct the origin myth, or history of the modern nation-state. This fact draws attention to the need for analysis of the local and regional refraction of increasingly global discourses on identity, citizenship and diaspora or minority/migrant rights within the international state system. This chapter reﬂects on the distinctive resonance of the discourse of diaspora in the context and history of post-colonial state building and related identity construction in South Asia. I argue that naming diaspora groups is not an enabling discourse for cultural minorities seeking their rights and entitlements, as may be the case in the Euro-American world. The discourse of ‘diaspora’ (currently articulated with multiculturalism in the Euro-American world) seems to enable the search for equal rights by minority cultural groups within the modern nation-state in that part of the world, and stems from the challenge that recent immigrants, usually from the empires, pose to national unity, and increasingly a collective regional or European identity. But in South Asia the discourse of diaspora, which highlights migrant origins from many centuries ago, might be a disabling discourse for minority groups’ rights, given the relatively new and contested nature of nation-state borders, and the phenomenon of irredentism and cross-border populations. The difference in the resonance of the language of diaspora and, indeed, multiculturalism has to do with the distinctive history of nationbuilding in the region and, arguably, the post-colonial world where the nation-state’s monopoly on the movement of people is a recent phenomenon. In South Asia, a region historically characterized by the crossborder movement of peoples, as evident in the enormous cultural diversity of the region, it is arguable that almost everyone or their ancestors is from somewhere else. But in contemporary public discourse migrant origins and diversity are marginalized as the view ‘that the natural boundaries of the state are those of a common cultural community’ – ‘the curse of the modern nation-state’ has become entrenched. The issue of diaspora or migrant identities is salient in other South Asian countries where commun-

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ities deemed to be migrant or diasporic have been disenfranchised and forcibly displaced by post-colonial states (e.g. Nepalese in Bhutan). Of course, as Mamdani noted, the situation is very similar in African postcolonial contexts. It is also salient in a regional context where what is termed irredentism, or the overﬂow of cultural groups across national borders, has been the cause of inter-state tensions and at least two major wars in the post-colonial period. This chapter then explores how the institutional legacy of colonial and post-colonial nation-state building transformed the structure of collective identity by effectively deﬁning and delimiting ‘citizenship’ and its entitlements (national identity cards, passports, voting and residency rights, equality before the law, etc.). It traces how the nation-state disables the idea of diaspora identity and political entitlements, even as it is itself constitutive of the nation-state. I argue that the consolidation of the language of the modern nation-state has transformed and undone older modes of identity and cultural co-existence that occurred in the wake of a continuous history of migration within the subcontinent. In Sri Lanka as democracy was instituted numerically, small and economically insigniﬁcant social groups, such as the Indian Tamil indentured labourers brought to Sri Lanka in the early 1800s to work on British-owned plantations, have been marginalized and minoritized in the post-colonial period. While other groups with roots in India, such as the Sri Lankan Tamils and the Sinhalas, were incorporated, others such as the plantation Tamils have been classiﬁed as ‘other’, and rendered stateless. Deﬁning Sri Lanka as a culturally distinct entity from the sub-continent was part of the process of modern nation building that also resulted in the eclipse of diaspora and migrant identities of those who became incorporated with the post-colonial nationstate. This chapter then also examines the politics of naming diaspora in the South Asian region given the institution of majoritarian nationalism as it constructs ‘otherness’, internal and external, through the metaphor of diaspora. The ﬁrst part explores the colonial construction of Sri Lanka as an ‘island of history’ culturally and nationally distinct from India. It traces the process of ordering and classifying identity and difference among the ‘natives’ in order to institute representative government and construct the bounds of the emergent nation-state. In this process some groups came to be identiﬁed as authentic and indigenous and therefore entitled to citizenship, while others were deemed to be migrant or from the Indian diaspora. The second part of the chapter examines how Tamil-speaking indentured labourers, brought from South India to work in the British plantations in the early 1800s, were constructed as a diaspora people in the post-colonial national imagination by the political elite, and were increasingly disenfranchised. I explore the Ceylon citizenship debates, and the disenfranchisement of Indian Tamils at independence in 1948, including its reverberations in the form of the current eighteen-year-old armed

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conﬂict between the state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) now ﬁghting for a separate state.

Migrant history Mixing, mingling and co-existence between various peoples, faiths and cultures through migration, trade colonization and intermarriage is an old tradition in Ceylon, Sri Lanka, Illankai, Serendib, or Taprobane, as the island was known depending on time, place and perspective. Most members of the island’s currently dominant ethnic communities, the Sinhalas, the Tamils and Muslims, spring from some forgotten Indian diaspora, as the origin myths of various, sometimes overlapping Sinhala and Tamil caste and ethnic groups tell. A little tradition of the island’s history also mentions migration and settlement by peoples from South East Asia, such as the Malay Muslims. The country’s minute, indigenous, historically forest-dwelling population – the Veddhas or Vanniatoo – are also quite hybrid. They have intermarried and cohabited with the linguistically and politically dominant groups of Sinhalas and Tamils who settled in their neighbourhood for over two millennia if the Mahavamsa (the ancient Buddhist chronicle) and colonial anthropology is to be believed. Like the bustling multicultural port cities of Cochin, Calicutt and Goa on the Malabar Coast, the island also harboured those ﬂeeing persecution from the Indian subcontinent proper, long before the invention of the International Convention on Refugees in 1953, following the discovery of institutionalized genocide in Western Europe. As a result, its coastal communities were and are highly multicultural and hybrid. Historically the south of the island has been dominated by Sinhala-speaking peoples including Muslims, Christians, Tamils, Euro-Asian communities, as well as tiny Malay and Chinese communities. Migrants over a period of time tended to assimilate linguistically with the dominant community while retaining other aspects of their identities. Some Dravidian migrants came to be assimilated into the Sinhala caste hierarchy, as Micheal Roberts (1982: 1) has argued of the Karava, Salagama and Durava castes in the southern coastal belt. Likewise, migrants to the north dominated by Tamilspeaking peoples have tended to assimilate linguistically with the dominant community. From 1739, when the last of the royal Sinhalese line of Senasmamata Vikramabahu died, the Kandian highlands were ruled by the Tamil-speaking Nayakka dynasty which hailed from Madura in South India (Kandy Devaraja 1972). The historical record shows that royalty married within the Kshatriya or kingly warrior caste, across ethnic lines, and across the Palk Straits, which divides the Lanka from mainland India. Thus it was that the last King of Sinhala Kandy ceded his kingdom to the British in 1815 by signing his name in Tamil. This is not, however, to posit the absence of cultural conﬂict in the region. On the contrary, there were and are numerous axes of local and

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regional difference and identity conﬂict between communities on sectarian, caste, religious and cultural practices within the island. But these were of a limited spread and duration. Thus until recently most native and foreign ethnographers regarded Lanka as a space of enlightened accommodation of cultural difference and diversity. It was this perception that also accounts for the fact that the British colonial administration saw ﬁt to bestow universal adult franchise on the island’s residents only two years after Britain in 1931. In recent times, however, armed violence between the state’s military apparatus and the LTTE, who are ﬁghting for a separate state for the Tamil minority in the north and east of the island, has resulted in de facto ethnic cleansing. This armed conﬂict, though often glossed as ethnic, is arguably a thoroughly modern phenomenon – the effects of the institutional legacies of colonialism and post-colonial nation-state building. The next section maps the consolidation of Ceylon as culturally and politically distinct from mainland India, and the rise of territorial racebased notions of ethnic identity in the island to illuminate the process of the making of ‘citizen’ and ‘outsider’ in the modern nation-state in 1948 – and its unfolding implications. It explores how certain cultural groups were constructed and identiﬁed as ‘outsiders’ because they were seen to be of Indian origin or some other diaspora, as the new nations of the subcontinent were drawn in the late 1940s. Clearly, the migrant history and shifting and interpellated identities of the island’s peoples have been eclipsed by the institution of the modern nation-state and democratic governmentality: its distinctive modes of remembering and forgetting (ofﬁcial history), its scientiﬁc and legal technologies of classifying, enumerating and establishing monolithic identity (race-based census classiﬁcation) and the concomitant practice of marking and making difference as the corollary of the constitution of post-colonial citizenship and its entitlements. In the territorial logic of the modern nation-state, the migrant and the diaspora community come to constitute a problem for national assimilation. The process of classifying groups that are ﬁt for citizenship and selfgovernment within a sovereign territorial unit has been termed by Mamood Mamdani (2000) as the institutional-political legacy of colonial rule. Mamdani has explicated how the colonial institution of race-based representative governmentality, as a prelude to self-government and citizenship for ‘natives’, invented distinctively modern forms of political identity and conﬂict in South Africa. He argues that if the nation-state is in crisis, it is the colonial state that is in crisis in Africa. In South Asia similar processes are evident. Race/ethnicity and later nationality-based representational government resulted in the generation of new names and concepts (e.g. residents and aliens, indigenous and immigrant) to deal with perceived difference among communities that had cohabited for centuries, many of which derive from migrant routes. These forms and names are yet coded in national census classiﬁcation and legal language that constructs

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citizenship in the post-colonial nation-states of Africa and Asia – a legacy that has instituted new and distinct fault lines of identity and conﬂict, as I will argue.

Migrant origins and erasures in the construction of modern Ceylon The present constitution of Sri Lanka enshrines Buddhism as the religion of the state. Buddhism was twinned with the state when the second Republican constitution of 1972 came into effect. The dominant origin myth of the Sinhalas, who currently number 72 per cent of the population in the post-colonial period, is that of migration to Lanka from India. This is told in the ancient chronicle, the Mahavamsa – the fascinating mythhistory of the Sinhalas and Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Since it was discovered and translated by the orientalist scholar Wilhelm Geiger in 1908, the Mahavamsa has gradually become the founding myth of modern Sinhala Buddhist identity and nationalism. The opening invocation in the Mahavamsa chronicles the three founding and foundational visits of the Buddha (ththagath) to Ceylon, intertwined with the arrival story of Prince Vijaya, the founder of the Sinhala vansa, from North India. In the Mahavamsa, Vijaya is entrusted with the protection of Buddhism, which also came from India, and Lanka is appointed the isle of the true religion (damma dvipa). The Mahavamsa proceeds with the story of Vijaya’s marriage to a native princess – Kuveni – of a Yaka tribe and the production of half-human (read half-civilized) offspring who have come to be identiﬁed in the post-colonial period when ethnographic study of the natives ﬂourished with the indigenous forest-dwelling Vedda or Vanniatto community, as they call themselves. The story then proceeds with Prince Vijaya tiring of the indigenous queen and sending for a proper high caste Kshatriaya Princess from South India, to enact a proper marriage that would consolidate the royal line and the Sinhala people. The Vijaya–Kuveni story, like the Aeneus–Dido story, ends with the curse of a spurned queen on the house of her former lover. The curse of Kuveni is still exorcised in Tovil ceremonies in southern Sri Lanka in times of personal and political crisis in ritual performances called the puna yagaya. According to this founding myth of the Sinhala people, the Veddhas are the true or autochthonous peoples of the island, while the Sinhalas and later the Tamils were in varying degrees migrants, settlers or invaders. This history of migratory and hybrid routes of the Sinhalas, as told in their own historical chronicle, has been elided in the post-colonial period. The Tamils who are said to have come after the Sinhalas, though the second queen of Vijaya was probably of Dravidian, South Indian descent, have also erased their migrant routes. This was apparent when the political leadership of both communities agreed that the indentured labourers brought from India by the British are the proper migrant and diaspora

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people whose claims to belonging in Ceylon and hence citizenship were questionable. How this happened is the story of the institution of national memory and forgetting in the process of demarcating national borders, entitlements and citizenship in the colonial and post-colonial period of nation-state building, whereby Ceylon was constructed as culturally distinct from the Indian subcontinent. A melange of British orientalist and modernisationist constructions of India, geographically and culturally proximate and regionally dominant, resonates in contemporary Sinhala nationalist antipathies towards India, Indian minorities, plantation Tamils and minority Tamils who are perceived to have one foot in South India. While arguably many of these antipathies have been fuelled by India’s tendency to assume a role of regional super-power since 1947, and by fears regarding national security, given the presence of Indian Tamils across the Palk Straits, they also draw from older comparisons of Sri Lanka and India. Contemporary popular Sinhala stereotypes of Tamils being more caste-conscious, hard-working, morally rigid, and, crucially, racially distinct from the happy-go-lucky, even amiably lazy Sinhalas, resonate with older constructions related to the colonial construction of Sinhala and Tamil people being of distinct races – the Arya and Dravida. Geography has been fundamental to the modern conﬁguration of Sri Lanka as an indivisible territorial unit favoured by ancient gods and modern progresses. Systematic mapping enabled this imagination, along with the British uniﬁcation of the coastal territories with the Kandyan kingdom of the central highlands of Sri Lanka in 1815. The unity of Sri Lanka is however a recent invention. In any event the British colonial order played a central role in erasing older lines of conﬂict and accommodation, and instituting new ones. While Kandyan nationalism in the 1920s and Tamil separatism in the 1980s–1990s have challenged the ideology of the unity of the island, it has remained by and large a central aspect of the modern national imagination of the land of Sri Lanka.1

Modern government and the invention of race-based ethnic identity There is no part of the world where so many languages are spoken or which contains such a mixture of nations, manners and religions. Besides European and Cingalese, the proper native of the island, you meet scattered all over the town almost every race of Asiatic: Moors of every class, Malabars, Travancorins, Malays, Hindoos, Gentoos, Chinese, Persians, Arabians, Turks, Maldivians, Javians and Natives of all the Asiatic isles, Parsees or worshipers of ﬁre, who would rather have their houses burnt and themselves perish in the ﬂames than employ any means to extinguish it. There are also a number of Africans, Cafrees, Buganese, a mixed race of Africans and Asiatic; besides the half-castes,

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This early-nineteenth-century description of the diversity in Colombo, the port city island capital of Ceylon, in a period before the onset of a fullblown colonial social anthropology and racial science, destabilizes the bipolar Sinhala–Tamil (ethno-racial-religious) notion that structures the contemporary Sri Lankan political imagination. Percival’s descriptions of cultural mixture and apparent confusion over the categories of populations in Colombo provide a clue towards tracing the shift in the articulation of the dominant mode of identity politics in the island from predominantly caste-based to race-based ethnic politics which came to the fore during the citizenship debates. Percival informs his reader of the existence of different ‘races’, ‘castes’, ‘mixed races’, ‘half-castes’, ‘religions’, ‘languages’, ‘classes of people’, each with their own ‘manners, customs and language’ in the city of Colombo in 1803. The ‘Asiatic’ is spoken of sometimes as a species within a genus and sometimes as a genus in itself. Though the Cingalese are the ‘proper’ residents of the country, they are not accorded cultural or political dominance in Percival’s Account of the Island of Ceylon. That privilege was accorded the Dutch and Portuguese and their miscegenated offspring, for whom the British Percival also reserved greatest contempt. The confusion of categories in Percival’s account of Colombo in 1803 reveals some of the difﬁculties which later British administrators as well as contemporary scholars of ethnicity and identity politics faced, attempting to make cultural and political sense of human difference and diversity, past and present. For the British colonial administration making sense of the diversity of colonial populations was, however, imperative. Scientiﬁc classiﬁcation and enumeration of the peoples of the colony was necessary for governance. The ﬁrst modern census was carried out in 1871, at the same time that a census was taken in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Prior to that, censuses in Ceylon had consisted of population estimates based on accounts of village headmen of the Kandyan highlands which were then added to the count of the maritime provinces which had been enumerated under the Dutch Governor Van der Graaf in 1789 (Panditharathna and Selvanayagam 1973). The 1814 and 1824 censuses provided information on castes and religions in Ceylon. In the early years ‘caste’ was the primary category used to differentiate between different communities, as was the case in India (Cohn 1987), but the term caste was used vaguely. It encompassed recognized caste groups such as the Vellalas, but also regional groups such as Europeans, Portuguese and Malays; it also recognized occupational groups such as washers and potters as well as larger amorphous groups such as ‘Moors’ and ‘Malabars’.

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Until 1824 Sinhalese and Tamils were perceived not as clear-cut ethnic groups but ﬁrst and foremost as members of a number of caste groups of various sizes. In 1835 the population was grouped under the following heads: ‘whites’ (9,121), ‘free blacks’ (1,194,482), slaves (27,397) and aliens and resident strangers (10,825), representing colonial preoccupations rather than native categories. The categories were no longer those of castes, but expressed a greater sense of inclusion–exclusion. By the 1871 census the term ‘race’ appeared for the ﬁrst time along with the category of nationality. In 1871 there were recorded 78 nationalities and 24 races in Ceylon. There was a certain amount of incoherence in these categories. ‘Sinhalese’ and ‘Tamil’ were races as well as nationalities. Yet the term ‘nationality’ was also introduced to describe groups numerically too small to be called ‘races’, such as Abyssinian or West Indian. The structure of the census, which divided Sinhalas into low-country and high-country, reveals an absence of signiﬁcant Sinhala–Tamil geo-political polarization during colonial rule. Rather, it indicates that regional differences between groups speaking the same language, as for instance between the low-country and high-country Sinhalas, were more salient than between coastal Tamils and Sinhalas. The salient geo-political borders, albeit colonially engineered, were not ethno-national or between north and south, as is posited in the Pali-vamsas, but coastal and high country. The colonial census reveals a systematic simpliﬁcation of the diversity of the island’s people and cultures by scholars and British colonial administrators. At the same time, categorical confusion and indeterminacy in the pre-1871 censuses also reﬂect the absence of a modern – that is, ‘scientiﬁc’ – race-based system of classiﬁcation of human cultural differences. When juxtaposed with the later censuses they reveal a story of how the colonial racial imagination was developed, articulated with and reconstituted local categories for marking difference and afﬁnity. By the 1881 census there was a clear consolidation of communal differences in the colonial census, and presumably racial imagination. There were only seven races left, namely, Europeans, Sinhalese, Tamils, Moormen, Malays, Veddas and Others. This settling of identity categories resonates in the writings of the Superintendent of the Census, Denham (1912). However radical the changes which took place in the manners and customs of the country, any attempt to understand the character, prejudices and outlook of an Eastern people was based on a realization of the innate conservatism of the East (ibid.). Now, Edward Said (1979) has noted that one fairly characteristic European response to Asiatic societies was the denial of change: the temporal ﬁxing of visual, spatial and racial diversity and intermixture. The conservatism of Asia was a standard feature of orientalist discourse that served to place the natives in the colonies outside time and history. Said has examined the representational structures of orientalism, but it is also arguable that the notion of race

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which posits internal sameness in the face of external diversity and change also enabled the positing of changelessness of Asiatic societies in the face of obvious cultural hybridity and transformation. Race conceptions functioned as a deep and invisible time-line for positing internal or genotypic sameness in the face of phenotypic changes, mixedness or miscegenation in the colonies. The ﬁxing of identity in this move ﬂies in the face of diaspora history and ongoing cross-border culture ﬂows. The process of stabilization that ethnic categories underwent towards the latter part of the nineteenth century in colonial Sri Lanka echoes similar processes in Britain and in many parts of the colonial world as race theory achieved scientiﬁc credence. But while the shifting structure of the colonial census says little about local categories for marking difference, it points to instability and ambiguities of ethnic identity categories which so often appear natural and primordial. It also points to the productive ambiguities and conﬂations of meaning that the translation of exogenous categories like ‘race’ created in the colonies. In Ceylon there was no equivalent term among any of the local languages for the European concept of ‘race’. The Sinhala term for race, jathi/jathiya, connotes various types of linguistic, religious and cultural differences. The term jathiya was and still is used to connote ‘race’, ‘ethnic’ and ‘nation’, not to mention caste. The process of translation and transformation begun in colonial times then put in place the cognitive structures of the conﬁguration of identity politics in Sri Lanka where Sinhala-Buddhists and Tamils have emerged as singular ethnic groups. For in the post-colonial period communal identities, or what are now termed ethno-racial or national identities, were mapped on to conceptions of race, thereby changing existing identity conﬁgurations. What is clear is that linguistic and religious categories have been consolidated along an ethno-racial fault line in post-colonial Sri Lanka. Thus, despite the fact that Hindus and Buddhists share many common religious practices, they are viewed as belonging to different, mutually exclusive religions. The shifting categories of the colonial census then demonstrate the point that identity formations are historically ﬂuid. At different moments they congeal and collapse different types of salient identity markers, be they linguistic, religious, ethnic, gendered, caste or class-based, indigenous or migrant. But race-based ethnic identity has served as root metaphor that congeals linguistic, religious and cultural mixture as well as diaspora roots/routes of the island’s dominant communities.

Debates over representational government and the construction of the Indian other Nineteenth- and twentieth-century experiments with race – read, ethnic – based schemes for the government of Ceylon echoed census uncertainties regarding the structure and organization of the island’s population. While

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in the early 1800s classiﬁcation of colonial populations was a fairly academic exercise, later civilizing liberal imperialism required the inclusion of natives in the government of the colonies. The census and the map served as crucial instruments towards working out a modicum of representative government between native elites and British administrators. For as Bernard Cohn (1987) has noted, categories invented through the census transformed old systems of classiﬁcation and consolidated new ones.2 Because it served as the basis for determining race-based representational government, the census was an instrument both in establishing new categories and in making them a social reality in colonial Ceylon. In the colonial situation, representation entailed a question of both knowledge (classiﬁcation) and power (political representation). Hence the connection between knowledge and power that theorists of colonialism and governmentality have observed: to know the other was also to know how to govern the other. Ethnic experiments at political representation have a long history in Sri Lanka, and are instructive. They were, as Wickramasinghe noted, a prelude to ethnic politics (1995: 27). In 1833 a legislative council of British and Ceylon members was established and selection of the natives was based on racial rather than caste representation. The 1860 Ceylon Legislative Council, while clearly race-based, reﬂected uncertainties regarding the constituents of the population. Puzzlement over how Ceylon could be represented was also reﬂected in British colonial uncertainties as to what form of political representation should and could be practised. What emerged was a fuzzy race-based pattern for selecting representatives to the Legislative Council, which nevertheless reﬂected the power (im)balances of the colonial situation. The Council consisted of three Europeans, one Sinhalese, one Tamil and one Burgher. Later, in 1889, the number of Legislative Council members was increased to eight in order to include other ‘races’. The Council then consisted of a Low-country Sinhalese, a Kandyan Sinhalese, a Tamil, a Burgher, a Moor and three Europeans. The Manning reforms of 1920 further contributed to the consolidation of ethnic politics within the sphere of the state. Racial or ethnic schemes of political representation were then the basis of early colonial attempts to include natives in government and left a lasting legacy that resulted in the disenfranchisement of the descendants of Indian indentured labour. Whereas with the 1923–4 constitution only 4 per cent of the population of the country had the vote, under the Donoughmore Commission of 1931 it was proposed to do away with racebased representation and extend the franchise to all residents. This included the descendants of Indian Tamil indentured labourers who had been brought to the island in the 1830s to work as indentured labourers on British tea plantations, all of whom were considered British subjects. The 1931 proposal to extend citizenship to the plantation Tamils on the same basis as the indigenous population – that is to say, after ﬁve years residence in the country, to all British subjects aged twenty-one in the case of males,

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and aged thirty in the case of females – led to a prolonged dispute among the native political leadership. The immigrant Indians numbered 11 per cent of the population at the time and their enfranchisement on such liberal terms as outlined by the Donoughmore Report was seen as a potent political threat to the Sinhala population in the hill country at the time. The commissioners themselves saw the problem thus: The problem of Indian immigrant labourers is a serious and difﬁcult one and arises here in connection with communal representation of the Indian community. There are at present about 700,000 of these people in the island, most of them employed in the tea and rubber estates at the higher levels where Sinhalese have hitherto been unwilling to work in large numbers. Indian Tamils are also engaged as labourers in Government, Municipal, or other work in the towns, and are also to be found as traders and shop keepers. The coolie section of the population are not very happily placed in their own country of Southern India. Many of them are of the depressed and outcast [sic] class and have lived in great poverty, and in many ways their lot in Ceylon is an improvement on the lot of their fellows in South India. At the same time, the conditions of the Indian labourer in Ceylon are still capable of improvement, and must be bettered before they can be described as satisfactory. (Ceylon: Report of the Special Commission of the Constitution 1928: 95) The Sri Lankan political elite saw the problem thus: Apart from the sheer size of the numbers to be enfranchised, there were other reasons why the recommendation on the franchise for the Indians in the Island roused the Sinhalese politicians to intense opposition. First, there was the perception among the Sinhalese that the bulk of these people were only temporary residents in the island with no permanent interest in it. Almost all of them maintained close ties with villages in south India whence they or their parents came. The frequency with which they visited their villages in south India, and the regular remittance of money they made to them, were seen as evidence of the transient nature of their connection with Ceylon where they earned a livelihood, and despite their poverty enjoyed a standard of living well above that of their kinsfolk in southern India. Sinhalese politicians ﬁrmly believed that the loyalties of these people were with India and not with Ceylon. (De Silva 1981: 83) As De Silva goes on to note, it was also feared that the numbers of Indians eligible for citizenship after ﬁve years would keep increasing given the existence of well-established traditional migration routes from south

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India to Sri Lanka for work. What is here noteworthy is the manner in which traditional immigration routes and migrant or diaspora identities came to be constituted as a problem at the emergence of the franchise question and consolidation of the modern nation-state of Sri Lanka. The Indian in the plantation sector and elsewhere in Ceylon came to be constructed as problematic at the moment of the deepening of democracy, with the proposal to grant universal franchise to all natives. The race/ethnicity blindness that was suddenly introduced into the process of government by the Donoughmore reforms, where no concession would be made to ‘communal’ (read minority) interests that had been instituted via colonial technologies of governmentality as evident in the census, and the experiment with race-based representational government was taken to its logical end in post-colonial Sri Lanka. In 1948, the same year that Ceylon gained independence from the British and citizenship deﬁnitions within the new nation-state became imperative, the Indian Tamils were disenfranchised by the native political elite. They have since been consistently classiﬁed as Tamils of Indian descent in successive Ceylon/Sri Lanka censuses. What is signiﬁcant is that fact that, until the question of enfranchisement (in 1931) and later citizenship (1948) arose, the movement of Indians to Ceylon had been less problematic, and so was diaspora identity. This was partly due to the fact that both Indians and Ceylonese were considered British subjects, but also due to the existence of traditional patterns of trade migration. During British colonial times the issue of passes, passports, etc. had been addressed by the Colonial Ofﬁce. The citizenship debate did not occur until after independence because the retreating British had decided to defer the question of determining citizenship entitlements to what would be the new independent government on the agitation of the local political elite from 1931 onwards. However, the contours of the debate had already been set with the consolidation of ethno-racial representation schemes and the political economy of the plantation system. The relative isolation of the Indian Tamils from the rest of society, whether Ceylon Tamil or Sinhala, their low-caste status and their poverty ensured the lack of political representation and mobilisation – and hence their easy marginalization – in national politics. The Donoughmore Commission’s ﬁrm resolve to introduce universal adult suffrage and abolish communal electorates and replace them with the principle of elective government in 1931 constituted an about-face to existing principle and practice of communal representation. This aspect of the reform was hailed as a great step forward by progressives and liberals. But ethno-racial thinking with regard to the question of (political) representation was fairly entrenched by then. Forced underground, racebased ethnic politics returned in the form of the political struggle of the Tamil-speaking communities in the post-independence period, culminating in the LTTE’s demand for a separate state. The extent of the colonial

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institution of communal electorates by 1931 is apparent in the fact that communal electorates were regarded as a political safety net by the minorities, which is why Ceylon and Indian Tamils vociferously opposed the Donoughmore reforms. Ironically the extension of the franchise in 1931 put in place an ofﬁcial ethnicity blindness that in fact permitted the increasing dominance of the state by an already mobilized Sinhala Buddhist majority. The introduction of an ethnicity and minority-blind system of elective representation, in the context of an earlier system which had served to create and consolidate a structure of ethno-racial thinking about difference at the political level, laid the groundwork for the consolidation of the bi-polar ethnic imagination in the country in the post-colonial period. Yet it is difﬁcult to posit, as many divide-and-rule conspiracy theories of colonialism have done, that the early use of race/ethnicity-based electorates which were later covered over by an race/ethnicity-blind electoral representation system in Ceylon/Sri Lanka was simply part of Britain’s colonial policy of pursuing its own self-interests by fostering ethnic conﬂict, and later erasing it, before withdrawing from the colonies. Rather, experiments with the census and forms of representative government in colonial Sri Lanka indicate that colonial government was at least as haphazard and experimental as it was Machiavellian in pursuit of British advantage. During this process some were cast as immigrants and others as more or less indigenous and therefore subsequently entitled to citizenship and voting rights. The process of constructing the emergent national democracy necessitated these constructions and deﬁnitions. It is hardly surprising, then, that a large segment of the descendants of Indian Tamil indentured labour have remained by and large geographically, politically and culturally marginal and distinct from the Sri Lanka Tamils who are concentrated in the northern peninsular and in urban centres like Colombo. This was the case despite and because of the SrimaShastri pact that agreed on a partial repatriation to India. Yet if the political marginalization of the Tamils of Indian descent was evident in the ease with which the government disenfranchised the group in 1948, the fact that their leader, S. Thondaman, was in the extraordinary position of being simultaneously a Cabinet member of the Peoples’ Alliance Government and a Member of Parliament of the United National Party opposition in 1995–2000, indicates the extent of the present bargaining power of the hill-country Tamils – a situation that has been produced by the introduction of proportionate representation under the 1978 constitution.

The dark side of democracy: instituting citizenship and the marginalization of migrant communities The struggle for national authenticity among various ‘ethnic’ groups has enabled selective national forgetting of the various diaspora routes of Lanka’s main ethno-religious communities – the Sinhalas who number 72

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per cent and the Tamils who number 17.5 per cent of the population. Rather, colonial race-based categories of difference to distinguish between native Sinhala and Tamil linguistic communities have provided the foundations for recently invented ethno-national identities and conﬂict in the island. Of course colonial state-building and colonial anthropology, intent on the construction of an ‘island of history’ set apart from mainland South Asia, have also conﬁgured nationalist erasure of migrant roots. Democracy, the ﬁrst ingredient for the legitimate modern nation-state, in practice perpetuates blindness to numerically insigniﬁcant groups. The passage of the Act in 1956 that made Sinhala the only ofﬁcial language of the country effectively ended the two-language formula that was accepted at one time by the emergent national polity. In the political and linguistic marginalization of the Tamils, India remained a hidden signiﬁer. Development skewed towards the Sinhalas was also the result of the evolution of post-colonial politics towards a centralized state, which articulated its mission as the engineering of equality between more and less privileged classes. In practice state centralization meant two things: on the one hand, the concentration of state power in the juridical and institutional sense, and on the other, the gradual marginalization of ethnic minorities which led to the politicization of the Ceylon Tamils and the disenfranchisement of the ‘Indian’ Tamils. Since 1987 there have been attempts to adjust the situation by disaggregating power from the centralized Sinhala-dominated state which controlled resources through Provincial Councils. These attempts have however fallen short of meeting the demands of Tamils. Attempts at engineering social and economic equality also forged a practice, which might be found in other post-colonial situations. As Jane Russell (1982) has commented, ‘so-called modern notions of mass education, the rule of law, unionisation, social welfare, nationalisation and state economic control of utilities, mass communication, the party system and parliamentary democracy had been accepted with an almost amazing alacrity’ in Sri Lanka. Yet, mechanisms used by liberal states to engineer equality of opportunity for minorities were systematically utilized by successive Sri Lankan governments to shore up the dominance of the Sinhala Buddhist majority. Programmes of ‘positive discrimination’ in British parlance, or ‘afﬁrmative action’ in North American terms, which aim to correct the socio-economic marginalization of immigrants and minorities, were used to the advantage of the ethnic majority. It is this phenomenon which has led many commentators on politics in postcolonial Sri Lanka to remark on the minority complex of the majority peoples – the Sinhalas. If the history of post-colonial (political) representation in Sri Lanka reveals a systematic encompassing or compression of diverse groups into increasingly restrictive categories, as well as a concomitant consolidation of a bi-polar ethnic imagination, the trajectory of the plantation Tamil and the Muslim communities has diverged from this pattern. The plantation

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Tamils, who currently number 5.5 per cent, and the Muslims, who constitute 7.1 per cent of the population, have been increasingly politicized and visible in national politics. A similar case to that of the hill-country Tamils is that of the Muslims. Since the ﬁrst relatively free and fair election under proportionate representation, the Muslim Congress has emerged as a bargaining power, also due to the fact that Muslims constitute a large proportion of the population in contested sectors. In some respects the cultural stereotypes which attach to Indian Tamils and Muslims are comparable to those attached to the small and impoverished indigenous populations such as the Veddas, Rodis and those who feature as ‘others’ in census classiﬁcations. Yet while many of these groups have been ‘forgotten’, marginalized or assimilated with the consolidation of a bi-polar ethnic imagination in post-colonial Sri Lanka, the Tamils of Indian descent and the Muslims have been politicized as a distinct ethnic group in the past decade. Yet the Sinhalas and Tamils continue to deﬁne the parameters of political discourse in post-colonial Sri Lanka. Attempts to alter the power (im)balance have until recently met with different sorts of resistance from both sides. Two contradictory processes are then evident in post-colonial Sri Lankan politics: on the one hand, an ethnicity blindness at the level of the state, which was paralleled by the politicization of ethnicity in the national imagination; and on the other, the erasure of small/mixed minority communities, which was paralleled by consolidation of Sinhala-Buddhist and Tamil ethnicities in the tussle for citizenship and entitlements. Thus it was only in 1987, when India intervened in the ethnic conﬂict in Sri Lanka, that the country was for the ﬁrst time ofﬁcially deﬁned as a ‘multi-ethnic and multilingual plural society’. The accord brokered by the Indians named four groups consisting primarily of ethnic populations – the Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and Burghers – in an attempt to provide a conceptual framework for a solution to the conﬂict between the Sinhalas and Tamils. The thirteenth amendment to the constitution outlined institutional arrangements for power-sharing among the major ethnic communities, which might yet be implemented through the devolution proposals.

The immigrant in the making of national order Human differences are deﬁned culturally whether in terms of ‘gender’, ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘religion’, ‘class’, ‘caste’, ‘culture’, ‘language’, or a myriad of other possible and relevant labels. It is not so much the facts of the existence of differences among groups or individuals per se, but rather how those differences were and are culturally coded, rendered politically signiﬁcant and meaningful or reduced, erased or made insigniﬁcant, that are of interest to the student of history and politics. This essay has attempted to explore how and why some groups have come to be deﬁned as more or less indigenous, though not necessarily autochthonous Sinhala-

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Buddhist and Tamil ethnicities, while others have been marked as ‘immigrants’ and therefore not suited for citizenship. I have done so by examining some of the erasures of migrant histories that have constituted claims to national authenticity and belonging, together with debates around citizenship and how overlapping and hybrid linguistic, religious and cultural identities have been consolidated in post-colonial Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is and has been a historically diverse island with various types, classes, races, religions and groups of people, as numerous ethnographic and travel narratives from ancient to modern times have remarked. Amidst this diversity, at different times groups of Tamils have been and are both the enemies and the afﬁnes (preferred marriage partners) of the Sinhalas (Obeyesekere 1975). Yet native and foreign orientalists and nationalists ﬁxated on categoricist identity formations, and what they perceive as the conservatism of the East, have tended to posit the strength of mutually exclusive and competing ethnic identities in the diverse nation-states of the Indian subcontinent. Sri Lanka has been no exception to this representational trend. Thus Sinhala and Tamil identities have been read far back into the island’s antiquity so as to underscore the mutually exclusive nature of their cultures. In these accounts, Sri Lanka has always been, and is destined always to be, an ethnic-based nation with ethnicity as a constant and unchanging factor. In the face of such simplistic yet compelling narratives of the island’s past, it is salutary to remember that ethnic identity, an abstraction, is often subsumed and crosscut by other sectarian alliances and identity markers. In post-colonial Sri Lanka Sinhala-Buddhists and Tamils have emerged as antagonists within the modern nation. The processes which have led to this confrontation commenced in the latter part of 150 years of British colonial classiﬁcation, administration and centralization of the island, but reached fruition in the violent decades of the 1980s and 1990s. Modern instruments of knowledge such as the census, maps and history have contributed to the conﬂict. One beginning to the present political imagination occurred with the capture of the Kandyan kingdom and the uniﬁcation of the island in 1815. Perhaps the end of that phase is manifest in the emergent north–south border of the 1990s; what is clear is that the reordering of geo-political boundaries, whether cognitive or spatial, is not new. Four and a half centuries of Portuguese, Dutch and British rule, not to mention pre-European political feuding among the island’s principalities, meant the periodic shift and reconstitution of internal geo-political units and ethnic identity boundaries. The large-scale internal displacement which has occurred since 1983 is a signiﬁer of the most recent redrawing of (ethnic) identities and borders in Sri Lanka, which has been bitterly opposed by the Sinhala-dominated state. For the conﬂict has rendered over a million, or a little over 5 per cent of the county’s 18 million people, homeless. Embodying a new kind of border are refugees who are ethnically Tamil, Sinhala, Muslim, Burgher, Malay,

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and those of mixed ethnicities3 and caught in the crossﬁre between Sri Lankan armed forces and the militant LTTE Tamil separatists.4 Until the government’s recent campaign against the LTTE, there were effectively two governments locked in bloody combat: one in the southern capital Colombo, and the other in the northern peninsula controlled and administered by the secessionist LTTE. So too have the borders of Sri Lanka been redrawn locally, even if this remained unrepresented in maps of the country. What is remarkable about the new border is the fact that it is ethno-national in character even as it rents what has appeared to most natives, colonial administrators, and visitors this century as the natural, i.e. territorial and geographic, integrity of the island of Sri Lanka. Though colonial technologies of government contoured the politicization of ethnicity in the island, it is also evident that the modern national order of things and the imagination which it institutes has contributed to the consolidation of ethnic politics in Sri Lanka. To say so is to hedge divideand-rule explanations of ethnic conﬂict in the island, and to mark the complex processes of translation that the play of local and global (intellectual) currents and technologies have had on local identities, consciousness and the structure of conﬂicts in Sri Lanka and the world over. The universal truth-values of democracy and progress which belong to the international order of things have ironically been central to the process of imagining the nation. The idea that people and cultures are rooted to places in spatially discrete units is not particularly British or colonial. It is a product of what Malkki (1995) has termed the modern ‘national geographic’ imagination, enabled by the ideas, (bio) technologies and practices which are conventionally associated with modernity – some would say postmodernity, I would say a hybrid modernity. The modern national geographic imagination assumes the rootedness of people to places, at home and abroad, in a culturally discrete and politically representable fashion. The map of Sri Lanka at the census of 1911, which spatializes ethnicity, encapsulates this imagination. Deep in the modern international order of things, its forms of government, and imagination, is the idea that communities are homogenous groups, rooted to territorially discrete places, despite the fact that this is hardly the situation of most of the world’s nations. Diversity and/or hybridity were and are a source of difﬁculty to this spatial imagination. Colonial administrators and modern nationalists have dealt with the problem of cultural diversity and mixedness in different ways. We have seen how race-based enumeration, mapping, classifying, ordering, organizing, and governing (colonial populations) achieved categorical and territorial neatness in Ceylon. In recent times in places where ethnic groups, religions, languages are mixed and spatially non-discrete, nationalists have found other solutions to cultural diversity and hybridity. Eugenics or ethnic cleansing might be extreme cases. In Sri Lanka the process has been only slightly less extreme.

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Finally, it is ironic that as the geographical boundaries of the Sri Lankan nation are increasingly challenged by the LTTE, the identities of ethnolinguistic groups living in the country have appeared increasingly stable.5 Increasingly, the idea that Sinhalas and Tamils have been mutually exclusive ethnic groups with historical enmities is believable. That is to say, the dominant ethnic groups living within the country are imagined as ancient, authentic, and constant through time.6 Conﬂict has deﬁned and consolidated ethnic identities, even as it has reinvented indigenous and diaspora communities.

Conclusion: citizenship beyond the territorial identities The notion of ‘diaspora’ communities both critiques and challenges the mono-ethnic nation-state and territorialized notions of identity, but is still fundamentally part of the majoritarian discursive construction of ‘otherness’ within the liberal nation-state. In Europe and in South Asia the notion of a diaspora people places immigrants within a ‘minority culture’ box, and their non-citizen kin as ethno-racial others. In this discursive logic a history of subcontinental migrations, mixing, hybridity and diversity is reconstituted and subordinated to the political discourse of modern nation-statism, which marks and constructs some forms of cultural difference as external to the body politic. The discourse of diaspora, even though it constitutes an aspect of the anti-racist and multiculturalism discourse, also enables the current universalizing EuroAmerican liberal discourse on the role of post-colonial non-white immigrant or diaspora communities within the national body politic. In South Asia it has other consequences, not the least of which would be its appropriation by indigenist nationalists to exclude ‘migrants’ who came a thousand years ago. Clearly the discourse of diaspora has different refractions in varying locations. In South Asia the question of diaspora is fundamentally tied up with minority rights, and is somewhat different from that of diasporas in the Euro-American world – a difference that I suspect might be invisible in a post-colonial Europe concerned with its recent coloured immigrants from the colonies. This difference also relates to the problem of cultural translation that lies at the heart of the post-colonial critique of anthropology and history and the argument that the discourses of modernity are varied and often incommensurable across cultures and locations – that we inhabit a world of multiple modernities. The task then is to locate and interrogate identity discourses in diverse contexts, without conﬂating the apparent similarities in cultural phenomena. The discursive turn in anthropology enables us to scrutinize the Euro-American construction of oriental societies and islands of history. However, this should not detract from or be seamlessly conﬂated with analysis of regional and local construction, selfconstructions and productions.

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The notion of diaspora has emerged at a political-historical conjuncture, characterized by the reverse migration of peoples from the colonies to EuroAmerican nation-states. But naming diasporas in South Asia has other effects because of the region’s historical diversity and the tenuous – and still contested – nature of national borders and identities. However, many Sri Lankans, particularly in the current armed conﬂict, have great stakes in contradicting/denying this. It is dangerous to have relatively recent roots in India. Moreover, authentic Sri Lankans rarely consider themselves to be part of an Indian diaspora. In this scenario of forgotten migrations and routes of identity there is the identiﬁable ﬁgure of the Indian Tamil plantation worker. Brought to Sri Lanka as indentured labourers in the mid-1800s, they were denied citizenship in 1948 due to post-colonial Sri Lankan state racism, primarily on the grounds that they were Indian, rather than Ceylonese/Sri Lankan. These descendants of indentured Indian labour consider themselves, to all intents and purposes, Sri Lankan. In this context I would hesitate to say that they belong to the Indian diaspora. They are and should have all been granted Sri Lankan citizenship. Clearly issues of identity, territory, migration and citizenship rights conﬂate quickly in the naming of diaspora, and naming diasporas has signiﬁcant political and legal implications.

Notes 1 It is often forgotten that the Kandyan National Assembly (KNA) put forward a demand for the creation of a federal state in Ceylon with regional autonomy for the Kandyans. In 1925 the KNA demanded that ‘The Kandyan race must be separately represented in Council and that our entity as a separate and distinct community be recognized’. 2 It seems that at different times the British emphasized ethnic diversity and conﬂict and at other times turned a blind eye toward the ethnic dimension of Sri Lankan politics. Thus Wickramasinghe (1995) has argued that postDonoughmore constitution reforms (1931) were characterized by a refusal to recognize the rise of communal politics and the failure to build in constitutional safeguards for minorities. Without positing Machiavellian conspiracies, it is still possible to regard the British refusal to acknowledge the development of communal politics in the Sri Lankan nationalist landscape as politically expedient, rather than a sign of British perception of a shift in ethnic identities and antagonisms in Sri Lanka. 3 At the most recent census which was conducted in 1981, the last decennial census in the country, due to the ethnic conﬂict, Sri Lanka consisted of: Sinhalas (74.0 per cent), Sri Lankan Tamils (12.7 per cent), Indian Tamils (5.5 per cent), and Muslims (7.3 per cent) [constituted of Moors (7.1 per cent) and Malays (0.3 per cent)] and others. These groups were and are unevenly distributed in the island, with the Tamil-speaking peoples being concentrated largely in the northern and eastern provinces of the country. 4 The eastern province and the capital, Colombo, constitute the most multiethnic parts of the island. 5 There are of course exceptions to this, particularly recent work by academics who are studying the colonial construction of India and its after-effects, principally the subaltern studies group. I use the term ‘ethnicity’ advisedly here. In nineteenth-

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century British colonial discourse the terms used to denote differences of what we would today term an ‘ethnic’ nature or ‘ethnicity’, were ‘caste’ and later ‘race’. ‘Community/communalism’ was also used to speak of ethno-religious conﬂicts. 6 Those who explain the current ethnic conﬂict in terms of a British colonial policy of divide et impera, even if they eschew positing an ancient enmity between Sinhalas and Tamils as the more nationalist positions do, still assume the stability of the boundaries between the Tamils and Sinhalas

Bibliography Appadurai, A. (1986) ‘Theory in Anthropology: Center and Periphery’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 28(2): 356–61. Cohn, B. (1987) An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ceylon: Report of the Special Commission of the Constitution (1928). Denham, E. B (1912) Ceylon at the Census of 1911, Being the Review of the Results of the Census of 1911, Colombo: H.C. Cottle, Government Printer. De Silva, K. M. (1981) A History of Sri Lanka, Berkeley: University of California Press. —— (1986) Managing Ethnic Tensions in Multi-Ethnic Societies: Sri Lanka 1880–1985, Lanham, MD: University Press of America. —— (1994) The Traditional Homelands of the Tamils of Sri Lanka. A Historical Appraisal, Kandy: ICES. Kandy Devaraja, L. S. (1972) The Kandian Kingdom of Sri Lanka 1707–1782, Colombo: Lake House Book Publishers. Kearney, R. N. and B. D. Miller (1987) Internal Migration in Sri Lanka and its Social Consequences, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Malkki, L. (1995) ‘Refugees and exile: from “refugee studies” to the national order of things’, Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 495–523. Mamdani, M. (2000) ‘Beyond Settler and Native as Political Identities: Overcoming the Political Legacy of Colonialism’, paper presented at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Obeyesekere, G. (1975) ‘Sinhala Buddhist Identity in Ceylon’, in G. de Vos and L. Romanucci-Ross, P. Alto (eds), Ethnic Identity: Cultural Continuities and Change, Palo Alto, CA: Mayﬁeld Publishing. Panditaratne, B. L and S. Selvanayagam (1973) ‘The Demography of Ceylon: An Introductory Survey’ in K. M. de Silva (ed.) University of Ceylon, History of Ceylon, Vol. 3. Peebles, P. (1990) ‘Colonization and Ethnic Conﬂict in the Dry Zone’, Journal of South Asian Studies 49(1): 30–55. Percival, R. (1803) ‘Account of the Island of Ceylon’, Ceylon Historical Journal 22. Roberts, M. (ed.) (1982) Caste Conﬂict and Elite Formation: The Rise of the Karava Elite in Sri Lanka 1500–1931, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Russell, J. (1982) Communal Politics Under the Donoughmore Constitution 1931–1947, Dehiwela: Tisara Prakasakayo. Said, E. (1979) Orientalism, New York: Fontana. Wickramasinghe, N. (1995) Ethnic Politics in Colonial Sri Lanka 1927–1947, New Delhi: Vikas Publications.

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Culture and economy in an ‘incipient’ diaspora Indians in the Persian Gulf region Prakash C. Jain

Writing in the mid-1980s, Professor Myron Weiner (1986) described the migration and temporary settlement of Indian workers in the Middle East as an ‘incipient’ diaspora. The description still appears to be relevant. Following Weiner (1986: 47), an ‘incipient’ diaspora can be deﬁned as a relatively sizeable group of foreign workers in industrial or oil-producing economies who are ethnically distinct from the host population and who are ‘allowed to remain in their host country only to work’ but are not entitled to become citizens. As such they live in ‘a state of legal and political ambiguity, economic insecurity and as social outsiders’ (ibid.). Though these foreign workers are not ‘immigrants’ in the true sense of the term, a large proportion of them ‘continues to remain indeﬁnitely in the host country’ (ibid.). The ‘incipiency’ of the diaspora obtains from the fact that naturalisation and citizenship laws in all the Persian Gulf Arab countries to which Indian migration has taken place are extremely stringent and it is almost impossible for the migrants to have permanent resident status. Often work contracts are time-bound and in any case most migrants desire to return home after a few years of stay. This migration is therefore transitory as well as circulatory in nature. Before we further elaborate on the volume and sociological characteristics of Indian migration to the Persian Gulf region it would be useful to point out at the outset that incipiency is the hallmark not only of this particular form of the Indian diaspora but also of the available literature on the subject. To the best of my knowledge very little systematic work has so far been done from the Gulf end. Whatever work is available is primarily based on empirical studies of Gulf returnees in the Kerala state of India from where a large-scale Gulf migration has taken place (Prakash 1998; see also Rahman 2001).

Formation of the diaspora Although Indo-Gulf trade relations existed even during the Indus Valley civilisation, modern historical evidence of Indian settlement in the Gulf

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area dates back to at least the sixteenth century AD. The Portuguese relied heavily on Hindus in their attempt to secure a monopoly of the Indian Ocean/Arabian Gulf trade (Allen 1991: 39). During the nineteenth century when the region came under British inﬂuence and/or administration, the Indian merchant communities ﬂourished in a number of towns in the Gulf countries. In Oman until 1970 commerce was dominated by Hindu banias who enjoyed considerable religious freedom. They served as bankers, importers and exporters, agents for local merchants, and government contractors (Allen 1987: 12). A more or less similar situation existed in Aden (Yemen) where the Indian community numbered 8,563 in 1856, 7,387 in 1931, 9,452 in 1946 and 15,817 in 1955 (Gavin 1975: 445). Among other Gulf countries the Trucial States (now United Arab Emirates, UAE) comprising Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ras-al-Khaimah, Umm-alQuaiwain, Ajman and Fujairah had extensive trade relations with India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dubai served as the major centre of Indo-UAE trade. Since India’s independence, ‘the Indian merchants and their partners also established an extensive illegal trade, sending Indian goods whose importation was restricted by the Government of India – gold, watches, tape recorders, transistors’ (Weiner 1982: 13). All these merchant communities, however, dwindled after the Second World War and more decisively after the independence of the various Gulf countries. These countries not only denied citizenship to non-natives, but also implemented trade licensing systems in favour of their own citizens. Moreover, at the same time the emergence of Gulf countries as oil-producing and exporting economies – and the consequent demand for labour – changed the size and complexion of the Indian as indeed of all other expatriate communities in the region. Large-scale Indian migration to the Gulf countries is a recent phenomenon. In 1948, for example, there were only 14,000 Indians in the West Asian countries: 5,594 in Aden, 1,138 in Bahrain, 1,000 in Egypt, 2,500 in Iran, 650 in Iraq, 1,250 in Kuwait, 1,145 in Muscat, and less than 100 each in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Turkey (Kondapi 1951: 528). In the next two decades the Indian population in West Asia almost tripled. Thus in 1970–1 there were a little over 40,000 Indians: Aden 2,000, Bahrain 5,500, Iran 1,000, Iraq 12,000, Kuwait 12,000, Muscat 4,500, Qatar 2,000 and Saudi Arabia 1,000 (Tinker 1977: 12). Since then as a result of the booming oil economy and the shortage of labour in the Gulf countries, there has been a phenomenal increase in the number of Indians working in the Gulf countries. Presently there are about 3 million Indians in the Gulf countries. Of these about 1.2 million are in Saudi Arabia, 700,000 in the UAE, over 500,000 in Oman, 200,000 in Kuwait, 150,000 in Qatar and 100,000 in Bahrain (ﬁgures of annual labour outﬂow from India to the Middle East and its distribution are provided in Tables 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4).

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Table 5.1 Annual labour outﬂow from India to the Middle East, 1976–99 Year

Number of migrants

Year

Number of migrants

1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987

4,200 22,900 69,000 171,000 236,000 276,000 239,545 224,995 205,922 163,035 113,649 125,356

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

169,888 125,786 143,565 191,502 416,784 438,338 425,385 413,334 414,214 416,424 355,164 199,552

Source: Ministry of Labour, Annual Reports (different years).

Table 5.2 Distribution of annual labour outﬂows from India to the Middle East by destination, 1982–89 (number of persons) Country

1982

1983

1984

Bahrain Iraq Kuwait Libya Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates Others

17,069 35,268 9,764 10,433 39,792 14,357 78,297

18,894 13,001 11,490 5,900 49,120 7,772 83,235

19,277 15,288

25,559 7,024

Total

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

15,514 11,246 11,398 5,855 5,466 5,512 5,179 2,449 43,228 37,806 4,362 5,214 88,079 68,938

5,784 5,040 4,235 2,552 22,417 4,029 41,854

6,578 8,219 8,520 2,330 4,284 5,085 7,354 9,653 5,679 2,272 593 632 16,362 18,696 16,574 4,751 4,654 7,991 57,234 85,289 49,710

24,286 21,286 8,410 4,729

23,323 4,415

24,931 34,029 26,189 3,544 4,471 5,406

239,545 224,995 205,922 163,035 113,649 125,356 169,888 125,786

Source: Ministry of Labour, Annual Reports (different years).

Socio-economic characteristics of migrants Region and religion About 40 to 50 per cent of Indian migrants to the Gulf countries originate in Kerala; the rest come from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa and other Indian provinces. A Survey conducted in the UAE found that 35 per cent of the Indian community hailed from Kerala, followed by Maharashtrians, Gujaratis and Goans. The majority of Indians were Sunni Muslim (56 per cent) followed by Christians (26 per cent) and Hindus (16 per cent). Gender The overwhelming majority of Indian migrants to the Gulf countries are male. The simple reason for this situation is the fact there are very few job

191,502

416,784

60,493 13,971

16,458 19,782 40,900 265,180

1992

438,338

77,066 19,974

15,622 26,981 29,056 269,639

1993

266,255

Total

501,000

26,000 20,000 65,000 10,000 60,000 30,000 100,000 152,000 68,000

1979

916,000

30,000 50,000 115,000 40,000 100,000 40,000 270,000 250,000 21,000

1983

425,385

75.762 20,476

13,806 24,324 25,142 265,875

1994

Source: For data until 1991 see Jain (1998); the 1999 data are author’s estimates.

17,250 7,500 32,105 1,100 38,500 27,800 34,500 107,500 –

1975

Bahrain Iraq Kuwait Libya Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia U.A.E. Others

Country

Table 5.4 Estimates of Indian immigrants in West Asia, 1975–99

Source: Ministry of Labour, Annual Reports (different years).

143,565

15,446 7,121

11,962 6,300

Total

8,630 7,044 22,333 130,928

6,782 1,077 34,267 79,473

Bahrain Kuwait Oman Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates (UAE) Others

1991

1990

Country

404214

112,644 26,162

16,647 14,580 20,113 214,068

1996

1,096,000

77,000 350,000 100,000 25,000 184,000 50,000 380,000 225,000 21,000

1987

403,334

70,674 28,866

11,235 14,439 22,338 256,782

1995

Table 5.3 Distribution of annual labour outﬂows from India to the Middle East by destination, 1990–99

1,505,000

100,000 – 88,000 12,000 220,000 75,000 600,000 400,000 10,000

1991

416,424

110,945 29,951

17,944 13,170 29,994 214,420

1997

333,846

134,740 33,654

16,977 22,462 20,774 105,239

1998

3,000,000

150,000 – 200,000 20,000 450,000 100,000 1,200,000 750,000 130,000

1999

199,552

79,269 42,968

14,905 19,149 16,101 27,160

1999

Chapter Title 105

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opportunities for women in the Gulf countries. Nursing, school teaching and domestic service are some of the few vocations which are open to women and even for these the competition among potential migrants from different countries is intense. Moreover, Indian society still does not favour independent female migration abroad. Thus, studies conducted in Kerala villages in the 1970s found that not more than 2 per cent of total number of migrants to the Gulf countries were women (see Commerce Research Bureau 1978; Mathew and Nair 1978; Prakash 1978). The 1987 state survey of Kerala, however, found this ﬁgure to be 7.5 per cent (Department of Economics and Statistics 1987). The proportion of women among the Indian population in the Gulf countries is also very low as the majority of Indian migrant workers do not take their families with them. It was estimated that not more than 10 per cent of the total Indian migrant workers in 1983, for example lived with their families (Gulati 1986: 197). This phenomenon can partly be explained by the fact that only those workers who earn a minimum prescribed salary are entitled to take their families along with them. Obviously, many eligible workers do not exercise this privilege. High costs of housing, lack of educational facilities for children, desire to save as much money as possible and inability of Indian women to adjust in the socio-cultural milieu of the Gulf countries are some of the factors which may account for this phenomenon. Age and marital status A majority of migrants to the Gulf countries are young. According to a study conducted by Commerce Research Bureau (1978) in Kerala it was found that 79 per cent of the migrant workers were 35 years of age or younger. Another study found that as many as 84 per cent of migrants were under 35 years of age and that about 50 per cent of the workers were unmarried. Educational and skill levels Educational and skill levels of the migrants to the Gulf countries appear to have been rather low. Data from Kerala state suggest that over two-thirds of the migrants to the West Asian countries in the late 1970s had completed less than ten years of schooling. The same study also found that about 62 per cent of emigrants were unskilled workers (see Gulati 1986: 199). On the basis of a few sample surveys done in Kerala in the late 1970s, Nair (1986: 71) suggests that by and large the Gulf migration from India represented ‘predominantly a ﬂow of excess operative and manual labour’ and as ‘the proportion of highly qualiﬁeid personnel was small, not exceeding 10 per cent for most of the region’ it did not constitute a serious problem of brain drain.

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Occupational status A signiﬁcant proportion of migrants from Kerala (ranging from 33.8 per cent to 69.4 per cent) were unemployed at the time of migration. The proportion of unemployed was found to be low in relatively poor areas where income and educational levels were also low. Conversely, areas with high income and educational levels were the areas from where white collar workers (clerks, typists, teachers, nurses, etc.) as well as professionally qualiﬁed persons migrated. In this connection, Nair (1986: 73) observed that this is ‘a speciﬁc area that has sent similar migrants to countries in the West and to Africa’.

Working and living conditions Indian immigrants in the Gulf countries suffer from a number of discriminations – political, economic and socio-cultural. The patriarchal nature of the social structure and the rentier nature of the economy and state of the Gulf countries have effectively curtailed freedoms of political expression, occupational choice and recreational and formal religious activities of the Indian immigrants, and particularly of the non-Muslim immigrants. As already pointed out, naturalisation and citizenship laws in the Gulf countries are extremely prohibitive for the immigrants. It requires some ﬁfteen to thirty years of continuous residency in addition to other personal qualiﬁcations to be considered for naturalisation. Moreover, naturalised citizens in all the Gulf countries continue to suffer varyingly from a number of political disabilities which prevent them from fully integrating into the life of their adopted country. In Bahrain, for example, a naturalised citizen may not vote or run for an elective post until ten years after naturalisation. A naturalised Kuwaiti is ineligible for nomination or appointment to a representative body and does not have voting rights for twenty years after acquiring citizenship. In the UAE naturalised citizens, with the exception of those of Bahraini, Omani or Qatari origins, do not enjoy any of the political rights mentioned above (Russell 1988). Trade unionism and strikes are illegal in all the Gulf countries, even in the UAE which is considerably liberal towards the Indians. The system of work permits legally ties Indians to their employers and a worker dismissed by his employer for whatever cause is legally required to leave the country. Among all categories of workers the plight of housemaids is perhaps the worst. Lured to the Gulf by dreams of prosperity, the so-called governesses from India ﬁnd themselves trapped in a vicious net of degradation. In the UAE and Kuwait where this problem is acute, there is no law providing protection to these hapless victims of the recruiting agents as well as the employers. In many cases, overwork, low wages, sexual exploitation, rape and torture are the broad parameters of their working and living conditions. Driven to despair, some women committed theft, often an attempt to

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retrieve their passport and some cash to run back home, or absconded or ended up in vice dens. In the most desperate situations, some have even taken their own lives. Reportedly, even the Indian Embassy, unlike some other embassies which have separate cells devoted to looking after the welfare of the maids from their country, provides no recourse to them, except promising to take up the matter with the local authorities, which it never does. In this regard the position of India – as indeed of most Asian countries vis-à-vis the Gulf countries – can well be appreciated if we keep in mind the asymmetrical relationship between these labour-sending and labour-receiving countries. As Weiner (1982: 12–13) put it: Gulf governments have little fear that any of the South Asian governments could do more than mildly protest mistreatment of migrants, nor would they be likely to suddenly withdraw migrants for political reasons or attempt to use migrants to extend their inﬂuence. India is dependent upon the Gulf for oil, exports, employment, remittances, contracts, and for the good will that it seeks as a counterweight in its relations with Pakistan. The Indian Government is thus willing to tolerate conditions for Indians in the Gulf that it would not tolerate for its citizens elsewhere, and its intervention on their behalf are likely to be in a subdued and less public fashion. The social life of most Indian workers in the Gulf countries is highly segmented. They are required in most cases to live away from the areas of native Arabs, in camp sites where they have to live a regimented life. Thus, social segregation is further reinforced. There is therefore little scope for building a ‘community’ among the working-class Indian immigrants in the Gulf countries. However, many middle-class Indian migrants who expect to remain in the Gulf for many years live with their families and have begun to evolve a network of socio-cultural associations which cater to their needs. These include schools, sports clubs, art centres, ladies associations, etc. In this connection Weiner (ibid.: 6) wrote in the early 1980s: The process has only recently started, and it is done with a minimum of conspicuousness. Indian sports clubs in Kuwait, Bahrain, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Oman – places in which the middle class can meet, eat, engage in sports, and conduct their social life – now have long waiting lists for membership. In Oman land was given by the Sultan in 1974 to enable the Indians to build a social centre. ‘There are now several schools for Indian children, a Roman Catholic Church, a few Protestant churches, and several temples, including a Gurudwara for the Sikh community’ (ibid.: 21). Similarly, Bahrain and Dubai also have one temple each, the Bahrainian temple being over a hundred years old. Elsewhere ‘Hindus must observe their

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festivals in less conspicuous locations, or in private’ (ibid.). Non-Muslim Indian immigrants in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to take along with them any religious books or idols. Any negative reference to Islam – even if mild or indirect – is considered blasphemy. Thus in 1992 a Sharjah court awarded six-year jail-terms to eleven Indian theatre activists (all from Kerala) for staging the play The Ants That Feast on Corpses. The death of migrants presents particular problems for families and surviving Indians working in the Gulf countries. The biggest problem of course is bringing home the bodies for funeral rites. In 1996, for example, 2,877 Indians had died in the Gulf countries, including 1,461 in Saudi Arabia and 785 in the UAE. In Saudi Arabia cremation is not permitted for the non-Muslims. In this regard elsewhere only meagre facilities are available. The dead bodies cannot be claimed until the responsibility of death (in the case of an unnatural one) has been ﬁxed, and the wages and death compensation due to the deceased have been paid to the next of kin. The whole procedure usually takes one to two months, and in complicated cases even longer.

Economy The Indian diaspora in the Persian Gulf region is in constant ﬂux for two important reasons: continuous ‘circulation’ of migrants and the upgrading of the skill composition of the workforce. The unique nature of the diaspora and the fact that there is hardly any social scientiﬁc study on the subject makes it difﬁcult to comment authoritatively. In the absence of systematic studies, it is only natural that newspaper reports should come in handy. These sources clearly suggest that the vast majority of Indians in the Gulf countries have been earning their livelihood honestly and in a legal manner, while a very small minority of them are involved in illegal economic activities such as smuggling, extortion and even begging. Interestingly, the latter reports are more numerous and precisely documented than the former. Indian immigrants in the Gulf region constitute two major class segments: (a) skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers, and (b) professionals and entrepreneurs. The proportion of each class segment in the Gulf countries varies from country to country. Nevertheless it is widely believed that the ﬁrst segment constitutes about 60–70 per cent of the total migration outﬂow from India to the Middle East. As an economist put it, It is striking that an overwhelmingly large proportion of the out migration, whether in construction or in other activities, was made up of workers employed in the service sector, so much so that the proportion employed in the manufacturing sector was small while that in the agricultural sector was negligible. Given that such emigration from India to the Middle East is temporary, it would seem to provide an example of international trade in services. (Nayyar 1994: 30)

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This situation is sociologically akin to the earlier ones in South Africa, Fiji, Malaysia and Burma where indentured and/or kangani labour and petty bourgeoisie (consisting of a variety of skilled personnel and traders) migrated simultaneously and yet remained apart from one another (see Jain 1990; 1999). The available data on the occupational status of Indian workers in the Gulf countries suggest that until the 1980s about 40 per cent were employed in the construction and transport industries. Utility and maintenance constituted another important category of employment followed by ofﬁce and paramedical services. Table 5.5 provides data about the skill composition of labour outﬂows from India to the Middle East for the mid1980s – a period characterised by declining labour export. Since the late 1980s there has been a gradual shift in the socio-economic proﬁle of the Indian migrants to the Gulf. The preponderance of workers in the construction industry and other skilled and semi-skilled sectors has been slowly reversed. A recent demographic study done in the UAE indicated that there has been an upward ﬂow in white-collar jobs. Indians have a stranglehold on textile, gold, electronics and construction industries. A sizeable number also operate hotels and restaurants (Chandran 1993). According to ﬁgures provided by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, skilled and unskilled workers accounted for about 70 per cent of the Indian migrants, white-collar workers for about 20 per cent and professionals for

Table 5.5 Skills composition of labour outﬂows from India to the Middle East, 1984–86 Skill category

1984

1985

1986

No.

%

No.

%

No.

1. Unskilled workers Construction labour Farm labour and household workers

88,575 85,797

43.0 41.7

55,710 51,330

34.2 31.5

45,577 39,314

40.1 34.6

2,778

1.3

4,380

2.7

6,263

5.5

2. Skilled workers Construction sector Other activities and services

86,014 45,882

41.8 22.3

86,037 46,318

52.8 28.4

53,432 24,485

47.2 21.5

40,132

19.5

39,719

24.4

28,947

25.5

3. White-collar workers

7,477

3.6

5,753

3.5

7,351

6.5

4. High-skill workers Para-medical staff Technical and supervisory personnel

6,495 2,630

3.2 1.3

7,378 1,205

4.5 0.7

5,958 1,175

5.2 1.0

3,865

1.9

6,173

3.8

4,783

4.2

17,361

8.4

8,157

5.0

1,331

1.2

163,035 100.0

113,649

100.0

5. Others Total Source: Nayyar (1994: 28).

205,922 100.0

%

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about 10 per cent in 1998. The study referred to above also found that in the early 1990s approximately 57 per cent of the Indian population earned less than 5,000 dhirams a month (3.6 dhiram to a dollar), whilst those earning above 25,000 dhirams a month was about 10 per cent. The rest ﬁgured in between these income brackets. In effect, more than threequarters of the Indians in the UAE earned less than 10,000 dhirams a month (ibid.). A good number of Indian immigrants in the Gulf countries, particularly in the UAE, Oman and Kuwait, are involved in a variety of business activities. Some of the business houses such as the Jashanmal and Bhojraj Advani in the UAE and Khimji Ramdas in Oman have long been there. Many others are of more recent origin. Major Indian business houses set up operations in Dubai after the establishment of the Jebel Ali Free Zone, Dubai Cargo Village and Dubai Airport Free Zone. By 1996 at least 150 Indian companies were operating in the Jebel Ali Free Zone alone. The Indian entrepreneurs are particularly attracted to such features of Free Zones as: no income or corporate taxes, no trade barriers, no control on foreign exchange, 100 per cent foreign ownership, negligible bureaucracy, and above all an internationally competitive infrastructure. Apart from individual entrepreneurs, a considerable number of Indian companies are involved in joint ventures in partnership with their Gulf counterparts. Another class segment of the Indian petty bourgeoisie in the region consists of professionals such as engineers, doctors, management executives, chartered accountants, bankers, architects, lawyers, teachers, etc. who constitute about 10 per cent of the Indian immigrant workforce. The professional migrants are drawn from all over the country. The Non-Resident Indian (NRI) remittances and investments have played an extremely important role in India’s economic development. India’s foreign exchange receipts from remittances have increased several fold during the past two decades or so. According to one estimate, whereas India’s forex (foreign exchange) receipts totalled less than $300 million in 1974–5, by 1984–5 this ﬁgure had increased to $2,500 million. The West Asian share in the country’s total receipts was 12 per cent in 1974–5 and 58 per cent in 1984–5 (Nayyar 1994). According to estimates made by Gulati and Mody (1983), Kerala accounted for 42 per cent of the country’s remittances receipts from West Asia in 1981–2. NRI deposits have immensely helped India in averting its balance of payment crisis. Time series data compiled by the Department of Economic Analysis and Policy of the Reserve Bank of India on India’s balance of payment trends since 1948–9 shows that Non-Resident Indian Deposits (NRDs) have risen continuously since the mid-1970s. The data further suggest that the dependence on NRDs was negligible up to 1974–5. After touching $40 million in 1974–5, these deposits rose steadily to $1.04 billion in 1979–80. The dependence on NRDs grew substantially in the 1980s from $1.8 billion in 1980–1 to $10.4 billion in 1989–90 and $10.6 billion in

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1990–1, before falling for the ﬁrst time in 1991–2 to $7.8 billion. The reversal in the rising trend of NRDs was clearly linked to large-scale withdrawal of such deposits by Non-Resident Indians following the outbreak of Gulf War of 1990–1. Since then the NRDs have picked up again and India’s forex reserves, excluding gold and Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), were estimated to be $10.2 billion by January 1994, and over $34.0 billion by 1999. It goes without saying that Indian workers save most of their earnings as they get free food, accommodation and transport during their stay in the Gulf countries. The remitted money is mostly spent on the upkeep and maintenance of their households in India, paying outstanding debts, purchasing land and building houses, and buying consumer durables. Lavish expenditures on marriage and other festive occasions have also been reported from the Gulf migration areas in Kerala and elsewhere. It appears that very little of remittances is used for economically productive purposes. As Nair (1989: 344) put it: The available evidence suggests that migration and the resultant receipt of remittances do not seem to have made any signiﬁcant impact on economic growth rate of the state economies. Nor did they have substantial effect on employment rates, labour market conditions, agricultural development and industrialisation. It would appear that the major part of the remittances which ﬂowed into Kerala seeped into other regions of India through the mechanism of trade in consumption goods and construction materials caused by the changes in consumption patterns and the boom in the house construction sector. Although most of the Gulf workers send their remittances through ofﬁcial channels, a considerable number of them also send their money through hawala and other illegal channels. These channels usually offer Rs.10/commission for every dollar. Attempts to curb such transactions have not been successful in the past. However, if the government can pay competitive premiums on workers’ remittances, a considerable amount of foreign exchange can be attracted by diverting unofﬁcial transactions through ofﬁcial routes. This would also help curb smuggling of gold, gems, jewellery, electronic and textile goods and life-saving drugs to India as the Gulf hawala dealers would have less foreign exchange at their disposal from this source. Regarding NRI investment in India, it can be effectively argued that the desire on the part of the Gulf and other NRIs to invest in India and to retain their Indian citizenship should be seen not so much as an expression of their patriotism but as a pure and simple economic calculation. If India provides competitive advantage in business operations for the NRIs, they would be more than willing to invest in India; if not, they might go elsewhere. This was seen during the 1990–1 Gulf crisis when the Indian economy began to show a balance of payment crisis. The NRI investment in India had begun to decline and a considerable number of NRIs did not renew their Foreign Currency (Non-Resident) (FCNR) deposits on maturity: instead

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they preferred to invest the money abroad. The successful subscription of the Resurgent India Bonds by the NRIs in 1998 – which fetched $4.16 billion – was mainly due to the scheme’s favourable price to the NRIs. It is signiﬁcant to note that the contribution of the NRIs in the Middle East accounted for about 50 per cent of the total Bonds’ receipts. A small number of Indian immigrants in the Gulf countries, particularly in the UAE, are involved in such criminal activities as smuggling, trade in narcotics and arms, extortions, and other subversive activities. Dubai has long been associated with smuggling of gold, silver, precious metals, and electronic goods. A number of Indian and Pakistani smugglers live and work in Dubai. Until recently about 150 tons of gold and 1,300 tons of silver used to be smuggled each year into India from the UAE, mainly Dubai. This is mostly done by dhows, ‘each of which normally carry 8 tons of cargo. At that rate, it works out to 150 landings on the Indian coast every year – almost one every alternate day’ (Tellis 1991). Proﬁts from smuggling are huge, ranging from Rs.40,000 to Rs.50,000 per ton after deducting landing cost, hawala transaction charges, bribes, salaries/commissions, etc. ‘Of all Dubai’s smugglers, Dawood Ibrahim is the biggest. He is said to himself smuggle between 25 to 30 tons of gold to India annually. The rest is farmed out to other smugglers with Ibrahim acting as a commission agent who charges a fee from them for making available landing facilities on the Indian coast’ (ibid. 1991). The UAE policy in regard to smuggling appears to be the one of turning a blind eye to such activities, as long as, of course, there is no breach of peace. Otherwise the local authorities are known to come down with a heavy hand on trouble-makers. Thus about 3,000 Pakistani and 500 Indian Muslim immigrants (mostly illegal) had to face deportation for their involvement in a demonstration against the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in December 1992 (Chandran 1993). One recent irritant in Indo-UAE relations involving some NRIs was the March 1993 bomb blasts in Bombay in which 257 persons were killed, over 700 injured and property worth Rs.27 crore destroyed. Whether this was a reaction to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992 is not known, but the fact remains that the government of India had carried out a massive crackdown on Dawood Ibrahim’s cartel in India (Ghosh 1993). A search was particularly mounted for the Memon brothers – Yakub and Ismail – who reportedly had slipped to Karachi via Dubai. Smuggling of South Asian children for camel races in the Gulf countries, Arab marriages to poor young Muslim girls, and sex worker trafﬁcking are some other dimensions of undesirable Indo-Gulf trade which are carried out by a few Indian migrants. ‘Arab visitors known for their wealth, lure through unscrupulous agents, young girls into so-called “marriages” where kazi and the agent are in league with the Arab buyer’ (Gogate 1986: 50). Some of these Arab men are quite old and already married several times. Cases of such marriages are often reported from Hyderabad and Mumbai.

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In recent years extortion has emerged as another ‘industry’ for some Gulfbased Indian ‘entrepreneurs’. This enterprise is thriving in some metropolitan cities of India, especially in Mumbai. Its conspicuous presence has been particularly noted in the Bollywood – the Mumbai ﬁlm industry which annually produces about 800 ﬁlms. ‘It is well-known that the Abu Salem faction of the Dawood Ibrahim gang has been behind extortion threats to ﬁlm personalities for the past ﬁve years. Film producers admit that extortion threats are common and that most of them pay up quietly after a bit of haggling over the sum’ (Singh 2000). Between January 1995 and January 2000 ten well-known ﬁlm personalities were gunned down or shot at. Apart from extortion, some Dubai-based gangsters have also inﬁltrated the Mumbai ﬁlm industry. Globalisation of the entertainment industry, competition from cable television, piracy through the inﬂux of DVDs and VCDs in the market, and unlawful private screenings of ﬁlms have all given a blow to the Indian ﬁlm industry. It is against this backdrop that the inﬁltration of the underworld black money has occurred in the ﬁlm industry. The Maﬁa is not only interested in producing ﬁlms but also in grabbing distribution rights of ﬁlms in the blossoming overseas market. The overseas market, which until recently, was a ‘mere pocket money’ option for Hindi ﬁlm-makers, is now emerging as the big factor. ‘So from selling ﬁlms for the overseas market for paltry sums, the makers have graduated to asking for minimum guarantees (apart from paying a ﬁxed sum, the distributor also shares a part of the proﬁt with the producer) for their ﬁlms.’ Not surprisingly, ‘the overseas territory started becoming a favourite demand of extortionists’ (Bhatt 2000). It gives ‘the gangsters an added advantage. Using a dummy distributor as a front, he can launder the money under the guise of bringing in forex. This white money is used to ﬁnance his benami but legitimate businesses in the construction, transport and hotel industries’ (Singh 2000). If Dubai provides a safe haven for a variety of criminals, the pilgrimage cities of Mecca and Madina have emerged as major sites for child beggars. Estimatedly about 1,000 to 1,500 Indian children (both boys and girls) are annually involved in this begging racket, especially during the Haj time. About 400 of them are sent from Murshidabad district of West Bengal alone. Estimates suggest that the maﬁa running this racket earn about Rs.5 lakh per child annually (after deducting expenditure). Depending on the number of children involved in the racket, the economics of begging in Saudi Arabia by Indian children runs into multi-crore rupees business (Mohan 1997).

Culture The layman notion of social organisation among overseas Indian communities is represented in Tagore’s analogy of the Banyan tree. Tagore held the

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view that Indian settlement abroad is akin to the spread of grand old Banyan tree. Implicit in this analogy is the assumption that Indian culture as well as social organisational patterns can be transplanted overseas. This view obviously does not correspond with the reality. The nature and patterns of social organisation among overseas Indian communities have varyingly been affected by numerous local factors. Foremost among them are the nature and conditions of employment. The kind of initial employment (e.g. indentured or wage labour, trade or profession) and the sociopolitical conditions in the colonial/metropolitan societies under which such employment was taken up constitute the broad parameters of the evolution of varying social organisations and community life among overseas Indians. Transformation in such social organisational elements as caste, kinship and family, religion, etc. obtained due to these conditions in different places. Hypothetically, it would seem that the degree of freedom of immigrant Indians in various colonial societies was a major factor in transforming the indigenous patterns of social organisation among the overseas Indians. Thus overseas Indian communities in the West Indies, Mauritius and Fiji – which were primarily formed due to the slavery-like indentured labour migration – exhibit more radical transformation in their social organisational aspects than the less coercive kangani/maistry-recruited overseas Indian communities in Burma, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka. To countries where Indians migrated more freely under ‘passage’ or ‘free’ migration systems (e.g. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania), social organisation among them shows least transformation. A similar argument can be advanced in relation to the more recent ‘brain drain’ émigrés and their communities in Britain, Canada and the US. It remains an empirical issue whether the above-mentioned hypothesis is also applicable to the Indians in West Asia. The purpose of this brief discussion is to show that compared to the ‘Banyan tree’ view of the overseas Indians, it is far more fruitful to study the emerging patterns of social organisation among them from the political economy perspective. The Banyan tree view presumes that transplantation of socio-cultural patterns abroad is an unhindered exercise. This, however, has never been the case. The migration process itself sets the limits on this presumption in terms of selectivity of migrants, their motivation and destination of migration, etc. The working and living conditions of Indians in the Persian Gulf region amply demonstrate this. To begin with, Indian migration to the Middle East is a male-dominated migration. A great majority of Indian migrants to the Gulf either cannot afford or do not want to take along with them their wives, with the result that there is an extreme sex imbalance in the diaspora, particularly among the workers. This seriously hampers the formation of an Indian ‘community’ in the Gulf countries. Middle classes comprising professionals and entrepreneurs are an exception but even here all family members are not there for a variety of reasons. Grown-up children seldom live with their parents, as most of the time they are in

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India or abroad for their higher education, which is expensive or lacking in most Gulf countries. A short-term stay and the inevitability of returning home are main features of the Indian migration to the Persian Gulf region. A recent study in Bihar found that about two-thirds of the working-class migrants to the Gulf stayed for two to six years, and 85 per cent for two to eight years. The same study also found a high degree of circularity among the migrants: 25 per cent were once migrants, 42 per cent twice migrants, 21 per cent thrice migrants and 12 per cent had migrated four times or more (Rahman 2001). We do not have comparable data about the middle classes. Thus short-term stay and circularity keep the ‘community’ in a ﬂux. The attitude of the host society is another factor in any consideration of community life among the immigrants. The Gulf countries are absolutely clear on this count. As Weiner (1982: 26) put it, Migrants are incorporated into the economic structure, but are excluded from the social structure. Separation, not integration or assimilation, is the goal. . . . Social contacts between Arabs and expatriates are minimized. . . . An increasing number of migrants stay for extended periods, and some may remain legally ‘temporary’ resident, with little notice they can be asked by the government to leave. The above quotation underlines a number of pertinent issues regarding the attitude of the host countries of the Middle East. Legally, there is no question of permanent resident status, naturalisation and citizenship for the Indian migrants. Politically, the Gulf regimes are authoritarian – there are no political or trade union rights. Economically, market forces and a bit of anarchy (split labour market in wage structure, coercion in domestic service sector, etc.) are the norm. Socially, the Gulf societies are patriarchal in ethos and practice. There is a certain social duality in terms of Arab v. non-Arab in the Gulf countries. Fortunately, there is no racism in the Gulf region but ethnic articulations such as watni v. non-watni (native v. nonnative) and Muslim v. non-Muslim are rather strong. Finally, Islam is the state religion in all the Gulf countries and any criticism – direct or indirect – is absolutely prohibited and can be severely punished. The above discussion suggests that for a vast majority of Indian immigrants, particularly the working class, there is no organised community life in the Persian Gulf countries. Some degree of community life can be said to exist among the middle classes. To what extent this community life is based on traditional Indian social structure and institutions such as caste system, family and kinship, village and caste panchayats (agencies of social control), religion and festivals, regional-linguistic ties, etc. is difﬁcult to tell for lack of any study on the subject. In fact we do not know even the social origins of the contemporary professionals, traders and other entrepreneural groups working and living in the Persian Gulf region. However, newspaper

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reports and observers of the region suggest that regional-linguistic ties are particularly strong among the immigrants in the Gulf. These ties probably supersede religious ties. Thus community life appears to be organised in the form of regional-linguistic associations. It would also not be out of place to suggest that the reproduction of the ‘community’ among the Gulf Indians is perhaps done more through fresh immigration and less through procreation. Except for those few who have been there for a very long time (mostly descendants of earlier generation of traders) and have identiﬁed themselves completely with the culture of the host societies, the vast majority of Indian immigrants in the Gulf countries continue to hold the more or less the same identities and patterns of cultural consumption as in India. Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that for all practical purposes the Gulf countries are an extension of India. Most migrants to the Gulf return to India within two to six years and the non-labour migrants who visit India for attending marriages of relatives and for doing business, pilgrimage and sight-seeing do so more often than any other groups of NRIs. There is also an impression that most Gulf NRIs seek spouses in India itself, which further extends and strengthens the bonds of family and kinship across the Arabia Sea. Thanks to globalisation, the Indian entertainment industry which includes film, musical concerts, fashion shows, theatres, etc. has expanded tremendously in the 1990s. The Middle East connection through the underworld and/or otherwise is well known. Regular shows of ﬁlms, music concerts and plays are organised in major cities of the region to packed houses. The audience includes not only the non-resident Indians but also the Arab masses. Sport and particularly cricket is another Indian industry which has been expanded and extended to the Gulf region. Although the favourite sport of Arabs is football, cricket matches are particularly popular in the region, particularly in the UAE. The World Cup hosted at Sharjah lent the sport considerable prestige and popularity. Similarly, Indian food, fashion and jewellery are some items which are gaining ground in the Middle East. Additionally, in the Arab/Islamic context the Indian expressive and performative arts serve as complementary items to art forms which cannot develop due to religious sanctions.

Future prospects In spite of drastic reductions in pay and perks, humiliating working conditions, changing requirements of manpower, and an increasing emphasis on Arabisation of the workforce in the post-war Gulf countries, an increasing number of Indian migrants have been entering these countries. In the period between April 1992 and May 1993 about 372,000 Keralites alone had reportedly ﬂown out to the Gulf countries. The phenomenon, however,

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is understandable given the fact that there are very few employment opportunities left in Kerala. In 1994 the number of unemployed in the state was reckoned to be around 4 million. In other regions of India which send migrants to the Gulf countries the economic situation may not be any different. Be that as it may, the Gulf migration is still an attractive proposition to the country as well as the individual emigrants and their families. As such the Gulf countries continue to remain the El Dorado for an overwhelming number of Indian migrants. The importance of manpower export and re-export for India is underscored by the fact that remittances from abroad constituted 25 per cent of its export earnings. According to an International Labour Organisation (ILO) report released in late 1988, the remittance inﬂows were 1.5 per cent of India’s gross domestic product, 6 per cent of gross domestic savings, and 7 per cent of gross domestic capital formation. In spite of this, however, as the ILO report itself pointed out, India had not made serious efforts to ‘manage, plan or channelise’ manpower export to the Middle East which accounted for 95.2 per cent of the country’s total labour emigration during 1982–6. The study states that the export of workers from India is largely left to recruiting agents and that the government’s intervention is limited to ensuring that the terms and conditions of employment conform to the speciﬁed minimum norms. Similarly, regarding ﬁnancial ﬂow of remittances, deposits and investments, the Indian government offers no incentives in the form of premium exchange rates or the use of proportion of remittance for imports. Also, there is no obligation on the part of migrant workers and their employers to remit any portion of their earnings to India. Foreign exchange control regulations only stipulate that remittances should be channelled through the ofﬁcial banking system and that balances held abroad should be repatriated when the migrants return. Such balances can be kept in a special account and the migrant can claim 50 per cent of the amount within a period of ten years. The study further points out that the Indian government tries to induce only the high skilled and high income people living or working abroad to provide repatriable ﬁnancial resources. Besides sending remittances, which have averted India’s balance of payment crisis in recent years and have raised the level of forex reserves to a respectable level, Indian emigrants’ role in boosting up Indo-Gulf trade is equally important. The latter role is even more noteworthy given the fact that the expatriates in the Gulf countries are allowed to do business only under the sponsorship of a local citizen. Nevertheless, if India beneﬁts from such migration, the Gulf countries too ﬁnd it equally beneﬁcial. These beneﬁts are derived from the fact that Indian immigrants are generally hard-working, efﬁcient, low-paid and law-abiding. Finally, the question of re-integration of Gulf return migrants is important given the fact that labour migration to Middle East is not a permanent

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phenomenon. Ideally, there is a need to transform and sustain this one-time or two-times migration-return migration process into what is known as ‘circular migration’. This is characterised by short-term, transitory, repetitive or cyclic movement of people in which the migrants lack any declared intention of permanent or long-lasting change in residence. The smoothness and efﬁciency with which this process of circulation operates would largely determine the success or otherwise of India’s manpower export policy.

Concluding remarks The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries – Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain – together host over 95 per cent of about 3 million Indian immigrants. Large-scale Indian migration to these countries is relatively a recent phenomenon – less than thirty years old. The oil economy and the scarcity of a native workforce largely determined the patterns of this form of migration from India. Most migrants originate in Kerala and other south Indian states and happen to be young, unmarried, less educated and unemployed or underemployed. The migration is ‘circular’ in nature, with migrants preferring to stay only for a few years at a time and looking for an opportunity to migrate again. Given the stringent naturalisation and citizenship laws prevalent in the Gulf countries it is almost impossible for any immigrant to become a citizen of any Gulf country. Lack of any political rights for non-citizens, a vast gap between host society and foreign workers, fear of cultural pollution on the part of the ruling Arab elites, and patterns of dualism (Arab v. non-Arab, citizen v. non-citizen, etc.) rather than pluralism renders the Indian immigrants as ‘separate and unequal’ in all the Gulf countries. It may not be an exaggeration to describe these Indian immigrants as ‘social pariahs’. The economic relationship between the Indian immigrants in the Gulf and the host countries can best be described as ‘symbiotic’. The Indians are always in need of an income and the Arab regimes ﬁnd in Indian immigrants a hard-working, disciplined and docile workforce. At the same time the Indian government is equally pleased to have in Gulf migrants a secure source of remittances and some economic investment. Geographical proximity as well as a degree of socio-cultural afﬁnity characterised by patriarchy provides enough room for Indians in the Gulf countries to transplant their socio-cultural habits and artifacts. Not surprisingly, Indian movies, music shows, cricket matches and certain food items are exceedingly popular among not only the immigrants but also the Arab masses. In the mid-1980s Weiner described the Indian diaspora in the Middle East as ‘incipient’. The situation probably has not changed since then and is not likely to change in near future. An overwhelming majority of Indian migrants in the Gulf countries remain as pure and simple ‘non-resident Indians’.

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References and further reading Adhikari, A. (1998) ‘Resurgent India Bonds: Well Priced, Timed and Executed’, Hindustan Times, 27 August, New Delhi. Allen, C. H. (1987) Oman: The Modernization of the Sultanate, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. —– (1991) ‘The Indian Merchant Community of Masqat’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 44(1): 39–5. Amjad, R. (ed.) (1989) To the Gulf and Back: Studies on the Economic Impact of Asian Labour Migration, Geneva: United Nations Development Programme. Bhatt, M. (2000) ‘Dard, Darr and Déjà Vu’, Sunday Times of India, 30 January: New Delhi. Birks, J. S. and C. A. Sinclair (1980) International Migration and Development in the Arab Region, Geneva: International Labour Ofﬁce. Birks, J. S. et al. (1992) GCC Market Report 1992, Durham: Mountjoy Research Centre Brochmann, G. (1993) Middle East Avenue: Female Migration from Sri Lanka to the Gulf, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Chandran, R. (1993) ‘India–UAE Relations Multi-Faceted, Growing’, Times of India, 26 November: New Delhi. Commerce Research Bureau (1978) Emigration, Inward Remittances and Economic Growth of Kerala, Bombay: Commerce Research Bureau. Department of Economics and Statistics (1987) The Report of the Survey on the Utilization of Gulf Remittances in Kerala, Trivandrum: Department of Economic and Statistics, Government of Kerala. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Paciﬁc (ESCAP) (1986) Returning Migrant Workers: Exploratory Study, Bangkok: ESCAP. Gavin, R. J. (1975) Aden Under British Rule, 1839–1967, London: C. Hurst and Co. Ghosh, S. K. (1993) ‘Crackdown on Dawood Cartel’, Hindustan Times, 22 March, New Delhi. Gogate, S. (1986) ‘India’, in Manolo I. Abella and Yogesh Atal (eds), Middle East Interlude: Asian Workers Abroad, Bangkok: UNESCO Regional Ofﬁce. Gulati, I. S. and Ashok Mody (1983) ‘Remittances of Indian Migrants to the Middle East: An Assessment with Special Reference to Migrants from Kerala’, Trivandrum: Centre for Development Studies (Working Paper 128). Gulati, L. (1986) ‘The Impact on the Family of Male Migration to the Middle East: Some Evidence from Kerala, India’, in Fred Arnold and Nasra M. Shah (eds), Asian Labour Migration: Pipeline to the Middle East, Boulder and London: Westview Press. —– (1993) In the Absence of Their Men: The Impact of Male Migration on Women, New Delhi: Sage. Jain, P. C. (1982) ‘Indians Abroad: A Current Population Estimate’, Economic and Political Weekly, 17(8): 299–304. —– (1989) ‘Emigration and Settlement of Indians Abroad’, Sociological Bulletin 38(1): 155–68. —– (1990) Racial Discrimination against Overseas Indians: A Class Analysis, New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company. —– (1991a) ‘Rehabilitating the Returning Migrants from the Gulf ’, International Studies 28(3): 307–15.

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—– (1991b) ‘The Social Implications of the Gulf Crisis: Refugees, Returnees, and Peripheral Changes’, in A. H. H. Abidi and K. R. Singh (eds), The Gulf Crisis. New Delhi: Lancers. —– (1999) Indians in South Africa: Political Economy of Race Relations, New Delhi: Kalinga. —– (2001) Population and Society in West Asia, Jaipur: National. Jain, R. K. (1993) Indian Communities Abroad: Themes and Literature, New Delhi: Manohar Books. —– (1998) ‘Indian Diaspora, Globalisation and Multi-culturalilsm: A Cultural Analysis’, Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 32(2): 337–60. —– (1998) ‘Gulf Migration and its Impact in India and Indo-Gulf Relations’, Journal of Peace Studies 5(1): 16. Kapoor, P. (1999) ‘To NRI Market, to Bag a Big Hit’, Delhi Times, 7 October. Kazmi, Nikhat (2000) ‘Bhai, why shoot a Dead Duck?’, Sunday Times of India, 30 January, New Delhi. Kondapi, C. (1951) Indians Overseas, 1838–1949, Madras: Oxford University Press. Kurian, R. (1979) ‘Patterns of Emigration from Kerala’, Social Scientist 7(6): 32–53. Mathew, E. T. and P. R. G. Nair (1978) ‘Socio-Economic Characteristics of Emigrants and Emigrant Households: A Case Study of Two Villages in Kerala’, Economic and Political Weekly 13(28): 1141–53. Mohan, M. (1997) ‘Child Beggars in Saudi Arabia: Operators Earning Rs. 20 Crore A year’, Hindustan Times, 20 March, New Delhi. Nair, P. R. G. (1986) ‘India’, in Godfrey Gunatilleke (ed.), Migration of Asian Workers to the Arab World, Tokyo: United Nations University. —– (1989) ‘Incidence, Impact and Implications of Migration to the Middle East from Kerala (India)’, in Rashid Amjad (ed.), To the Gulf and Back: Studies on the Economic Impact of Asian Labour Migration, New Delhi: ILO-ARTEP. Nayyar, D. (1994) Migration, Remittances and Capital Flows: The Indian Experience, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Omran, A. R. and Farzaneh Roudi (1993) ‘The Middle East Population Puzzle’. Population Bulletin 48(1): 1–38. Parekh, B. (1993) ‘Some Reﬂections on the Indian Diaspora’, paper presented at the Second Global Convention of People of Indian Origin, 27–31 December, New Delhi. Prakash, B. A. (1978) ‘Impact of Foreign Remittances: A Case Study of Chavakkad Village in Kerala’, Economic and Political Weekly 13(27): 1107–11. —– (1998) ‘Gulf Migration and its Economic Impact: The Kerala Experience’, Economic and Political Weekly, 12 December. Rahman, A. (2001) Indian Labour Migration to the Gulf, New Delhi: Rajat. Russell, S. S. (1988) ‘Migration and Political Integration in the Arab World’, in Giacomo Luciani and Ghassam Salame (eds). The Politics of Arab Integration, London: Croom Helm. Serageldin, I. et al. (1981) Manpower and International Migraition in the Middle East and North Africa, Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Singh, A. (2000) ‘The bilence of the Lambs’, Sunday Times of India, 30 January, New Delhi. Tinker, H. (1977) The Banyan Tree: Overseas Immigrant from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Tellis, O. (1991) ‘Dawood Versus Dawood’, Sunday Observer, 18–24 August, New Delhi. Weiner, M. (1982) ‘International Migration and Development: Indians in the Persian Gulf ’, Population and Development Review 8(1): 1–36. —– (1986) ‘Labour Migrations as Incipient Diasporas’, in Gabriel Sheffer (ed.), Modern Diasporas in International Politics, London: Croom Helm.

Chapter Title

6

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The politics of ‘cultural renaissance’ among Indo-Trinidadians N. Jayaram

On 30 May 1995, Indo-Trinidadians celebrated the sesquicentenary of the arrival of the ﬁrst Indians on the island of Trinidad. By the end of that year, Basdeo Panday, the grandson of a cane cutter, became the Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the ﬁrst ever IndoTrinidadian to assume that high political ofﬁce. In the run-up decade to these historic markers, Indo-Trinidadians experienced an unprecedented religious and cultural revival, which is often described by its leadership and the intelligentsia alike as a ‘cultural renaissance’. This chapter seeks to locate the politics of this cultural renaissance in the context of the politicoeconomic competition between Indo- and Afro-Trinidadians. The information and insights presented in this chapter were gathered during my sojourn as Visiting Professor of Indian Studies at the University of West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad, during 1994–6. I acknowledge with grateful thanks the assistance and affection received from Dr Brinsley Samaroo. Its substantive focus is on the recent developments within the IndoTrinidadian community, and these are delineated through three case studies. However, a fuller understanding of the current scenario is possible only with the backdrop of the historical evolution of Indo-Trinidadians as a diasporic community.

Indians in Trinidad: from indentured labour to political power The making of a diasporic community To overcome the labour crisis on the plantations consequent upon the abolition of slavery in the British territories (1834–8), the colonial administration resorted to ‘a new system of slavery’ (Tinker 1993) euphemistically termed ‘indentured labour’. Under this system, between 1845 and 1917 (when it was abolished) 143,939 labourers were brought from India to Trinidad. Of these only about 22 per cent eventually returned to India. Those who stayed and their descendants constitute the diasporic community called at various times as the ‘East Indians’, ‘Trinidad Indians’, or ‘Indo-Trinidadians’. According to the 1990 Population and Housing

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Census, they constitute the largest ethnic group in Trinidad and Tobago forming 40.3 per cent of the population (Central Statistical Ofﬁce 1994: xiv).1 The induction of Indians into Trinidad further complicated the island’s ethnic-based stratiﬁcation proﬁle in which the ‘whites’ (the planters, owners of merchant houses, and administrators), ‘coloureds’ (in intermediate occupations) and the mass of ‘blacks’ (from diverse groups in Africa comprising the majority of agricultural labourers or peasants) formed a hierarchy in that order (see Yelvington 1993). To start with, Indians were placed lowest in the hierarchy, as they had come to occupy the labour positions vacated by the emancipated slaves. The plantation elite pursued the policy of isolation of Indian immigrants from the rest of society, especially ‘blacks’, and created negative stereotypes of both (ibid.). The physical isolation and ethnic stereotyping of Indians during the period of indenture isolated them socio-culturally too, and precluded syncretism and cultural borrowing in any signiﬁcant way. It is hardly surprising that the immigrant Indians, dubbed ‘coolies’ by the rest of the society including the blacks, clung to the socio-cultural baggage which they had brought from India. Based on this ‘cultural persistence’ (Klass 1961) they reconstituted themselves as an ethnic group and developed ethnicity as‘Indo-Trinidadians’.2 The conscious deployment of this identity enabled the immigrant Indians to effectively resist the process of ‘creolisation’ later. The perceived attack on this ethnic identity and its aggressive defence, at least by a signiﬁcant section of the immigrant Indians, has shaped the community as a political force to reckon with. A crucial factor which contributed to the sharpening of ethnicity and vitiating the ethnic relations in Trinidad was the division of labour on ethnic lines. In the colonial era, whites owned the plantations, Chinese and Portuguese engaged in trading occupations, blacks and coloureds moved into professions and skilled manual occupations, and Indians overwhelmingly (81.3 per cent according to the 1891 Census of Trinidad and Tobago) engaged in agriculture (see Ryan 1991a). The ethnic division of labour has no doubt broken down during the last half century, especially after the Second World War (1939–45), the achievement of Independence (1962) and the phenomenon of ‘oil boom’ (1973–82). There have emerged new avenues of economic competition: business, the bureaucracy, and the professions. However, the stereotypes originally derived from the ethnic division of labour and internalised by the subjugated groups, and the attitudes associated with it, are still prevalent. Politicisation of ethnicity The advent of universal suffrage in 1946 saw the candidates overtly appealing to ethnicity in their attempt to garner votes. In such an environment the institutionalisation of party politics in the 1950s could not but lead to

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the simultaneous politicisation of ethnic politics (Yelvington 1993). The People’s National Movement (PNM), founded in 1955 under the leadership of Eric Williams, with a view to forging a new nation by erasing ethnic differences, soon came to be identiﬁed as ‘the black party’ solely representing the interests of Afro-Trinidadians. The ‘symbols of nation’ (such as steel bands, calypso, carnival, etc.) which the PNM chose were interpreted as Afro-Trinidadian, and the representation it gave to Indo-Trinidadians was dismissed as ‘tokenism’. The perception of the PNM as anti-Indo-Trinidadian besides being proAfro-Trinidadian, and the perception of a threat of Afro-Trinidadian hegemony, led the Indo-Trinidadian leadership to form in 1956 the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). The PDP, and its later incarnations such as the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) in the 1960s and the United Labour Front (ULF) in the 1970s, have been the chief political fronts representing the Indo-Trinidadian interests (La Guerre 1991). Considering its politicisation, it is only to be expected that in successive general elections ethnicity has been the major determinant (see Ryan 1991b). It is no secret that despite their self-proclaimed multiethnic ideals, both the PNM and DLP/ULF could ill afford to ignore the ethnic element in electioneering and to refrain from appealing to ethnic allegiance for votes. More important, people came to perceive, and not without justiﬁcation in a democracy, that the party winning the elections and securing political power could use it to perpetuate its own interests and those of the ethnic group which supports it. The phenomenon of ethnic tension associated with the democratic game of winning power and retaining it can only be understood in this context. The PNM won the ﬁrst and subsequent general elections and remained in power uninterruptedly till 1986. Ironically, its main period of embarrassment was the Black Power Movement, which, when it assumed critical proportion in early 1970, was crushed by armed state intervention and military assistance from neighbouring countries (see Gosine 1986). Embarrassing PNM apart, by its use of African symbols and by its identiﬁcation of the politically and economically disadvantaged with ‘black’, the Black Power Movement tended to further alienate Indo-Trinidadians in general. Not being able to meet the aspirations of the people, not excluding AfroTrinidadians, PNM was routed in the 1986 general elections by the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), a coalition of erstwhile opposition parties. Contrary to expectations, overt appeals to ethnicity in politics did not cease. Soon the NAR (led by a Tobagonian of African origin, A. N. R. Robinson) splintered on ethnic lines, and a new party – the United National Congress (UNC) – representing Indo-Trinidadian interests was formed under the leadership of Basdeo Panday. The ethnic divide between Afro- and IndoTrinidadians was further complicated by the unsuccessful coup attempt in July 1990 by the Jamaat Al Muslimeen, an organisation of ‘black Muslims’ led by Afro-Trinidadian Imam Yasin Abu Bakr (see Deosaran 1993).

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In 1991, the PNM came back to power, and embarking on a programme of structural readjustment and economic liberalisation, struggled to maintain political credibility. Considering the crisis in which the economy had landed after the ‘oil bust’, the social fallout of rising rates of unemployment and crime, the hard decisions which those in power had to take, and not the least the simmering ethnic discontent, it was hardly surprising that PNM lost the 1995 elections. The Panday led UNC-NAR coalition government came to power. Does modernisation matter? In this context, one is led to ask: what has been the impact of the process of modernisation set in motion in the post-independence period and the buoyancy of economy resulting from the oil boom? A theoretician such as Gellner (1983), for instance, would have hypothesised that the pervasive high culture of modernisation will eventually undermine the ethnic-cultural diversities, leading to the establishment of a unitary society. Evidence on post-independence Trinidad, however, lends support to Despres’s (1984) opposite thesis that modernisation is likely to increase the saliency of ethnic distinctions, thus contributing to the persistence of plural societies. The oil boom could be seen as having endowed Trinidad with new resources and wider opportunities for ethnic competition and ethnic mobilisation. Indo-Trinidadians emphasise the ‘fact’ that the beneﬁts of expansion of the state sector resulting from economic gains of the oil boom were largely cornered by Afro-Trinidadians. On their part, Afro-Trinidadians highlight the ‘fact’ that the business opportunities emerging from the oil boom were monopolised by Indo-Trinidadians. It is in the light of such mutual ethnic perceptions of ‘reality’ that one should understand the complicated nature of the stratiﬁcation proﬁle of and ethnic relations in Trinidad. Ethnicity and social tensions associated with it are not, however, conﬁned to economic and political spheres. They have an inexorable tendency to percolate and extend to every conceivable realm: cricket, calypsos and carnival have all, not surprisingly, provided arenas for ethnic politics. Ethnic politics, therefore, precipitates the reactive pride in the distinctiveness of one’s own culture and the correlative tendency to besmirch the culture of others. The ideologisation of culture is, thus, the inevitable byproduct of the politicisation of ethnicity. How this has happened in the case of Indo-Trinidadians we shall now consider.

The politics of cultural renaissance The idiom of culture: ‘ethnicisation of Hinduism’ In negotiating the ethnic competition in political and economic spheres, Indo-Trinidadians invariably invoke the idiom of culture. From the very beginning, one thing that Indian immigrants to Trinidad have clung to as

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an anchor in the sea of economic uncertainty and political subjugation is culture. As early as 1870, the Royal Commission observed that ‘The coolie [Indian] despises the negro because he considers him . . . not so highly civilised as himself ’ (quoted by Adamson 1984: 49). That it is their possession of a distinct culture which distinguishes them from their Afrocounterparts is almost an axiom among Indo-Trinidadians. The point of reference for their culture is what many Indo-Trinidadians would describe as ‘mother India’. India is assumed to be a country of ritual purity, religious authenticity, and the locale of original religious traditions; and their cultural ancestry is traced to it. This is very signiﬁcant since although the overwhelming majority (about 90 per cent) of the immigrants hailed from what is today western Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh in north-east India, they were drawn from different areas and from different villages within a given area, with divergent linguistic/dialectal, religious, caste, economic, ecological, cultural traditions (see Vertovec 1992; Laurence 1994). Furthermore, unlike the large-scale family migration under the kangani system of recruitment for Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), labourers for Trinidad, were recruited individually by an agency. Thus, the imagination and constitution of ‘culture’ as a uniﬁed symbol of Indo-Trinidadian ethnicity is remarkable. The Indo-Trinidadian idea of ‘culture’ is catch-all in nature. However, closer scrutiny reveals that what is advanced as culture is subsumed under religious practices, strongly inﬂuenced by Hinduism. It has been observed that in Trinidad and elsewhere in the Caribbean ‘a generally unitary Hindu religion’ has emerged (Vertovec 1994: 123) and ‘a homogeneous Hindu community has been constructed’ (van der Veer and Vertovec 1991: 149). The ‘ethnicisation of Hinduism’ necessarily implies that ‘symbols of Hinduism’ are regarded by Hindus, as well as non-Hindus, as ‘visible markers of group identity and collective purpose’ (ibid.: 163). This explains the political import of Hinduism in Trinidad and elsewhere in the Caribbean and wider Indian diaspora.3 Both in the development of a unitary Hinduism and in its ethnicisation the Brahmans have played a signiﬁcant role (Bisnauth 1989). The Brahmans imposed some organisation of religious beliefs and practices, and in the first quarter of this century they ‘mounted a campaign against apostasy from Hinduism’. This is notewothy considering the pressures of Christianity and the Afro-Caribbean forms of religion, both of which occupied (and continue to occupy) a superior place in society, and the political domination of the British and later the Afro-Trinidadian population. As Ryan (1972: 141) remarks, the ‘pundits were among the principal opinion leaders within the Hindu community’, and they have ‘always been the source to which politicians turned for help in their political careers’. The resurgence of Hinduism in Trinidad, which has reinforced the place of Hindu rituals in the emerging lifestyles of the Hindus, has bolstered the status of the pundit.

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Rituals and festivals: communitarian orientation The development of a unitary Hindu tradition, as can be expected, has its popular base in rituals rather than in doctrines. The performance of pujas and yags and the holding of kathas have now become an integral part of Hindu domestic life, especially among those who can afford them. The ‘Rama Leela’ pageant, ﬁrst organised in 1890 by Pundit Rajnath Kanwar Maharaj in central Trinidad (Jha 1989: 230), after experiencing some ups and downs, has since the 1970s become an important component of Hinduism’s cultural existence in Trinidad. Also, due to the inﬂuence of Christianity, a congregational element has entered Hinduism: while Hinduism speciﬁes no timings for temple visits, visiting temples on Sunday mornings has developed as a standard practice among Trinidad Hindus. More important, the festivals of Divali and Phagwa have developed as community affairs and Divali is a national holiday now. During Divali, besides lighting diyas (coconut oil lamps) at home, organised illuminations are arranged in savannahs: bamboo stands and scaffolding are put up in several parts of Trinidad and competitions are held. Phagwa (the Hindu spring festival) is celebrated with traditional dry abir and coloured water, besides the ceremonial burning of the demon Holika. Phagwa song composition and singing competitions (like calypsos during carnival) are also held. The communitarian nature of the celebration of these festivals obviously serves political symbolisation. This is even more marked in physical terms by the establishment of Divalinagar (near Chaguanas in central Trinidad) as a visible cultural site for Indo-Trinidadians. Language and ethnicity Another important facet of cultural renaissance among the IndoTrinidadians concerns the language question (see Jayaram 2000). While an ethnic group is not necessarily coterminous with a linguistic or speech community, there is no gainsaying that in a multiethnic polity characterised by cultural contentions, language could become an important element of ethnic identity. Thus, the efforts at revival of Hindi and its propagation, which began in the 1950s, could be viewed as a conscious reaction by sections of Indo-Trinidadians against the loss of their distinctive cultural heritage through linguistic attrition. Several organisations and individuals, religious and/or cultural in orientation, have played a role in this. Although the cultural aspect is not ignored, the Hindi orientation of the Hindu organisations is primarily religious in nature. Considering the nature of Trinidadian ethnic politics in general and the politics of culture in particular, the increasing occurance of Hindi in the audiovisual media appears to be an attempt by sections of IndoTrinidadians to occupy the keenly contested cultural space in the country. In the ethnic politics of Trinidad, the Hindi question has often acquired a political colour. According to La Guerre, in the post-colonial suffrage

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situation, Hindi and the institutions associated with Hindi represented centres of resistance against the newly independent government and also as centres for opposition resistance. Viewed in this light, the ﬁrst International Hindi Conference held in Trinidad in April 1992 appeared to him to be a celebration of ‘not really a language, but the presence of the Indians on the social and political stage of Trinidad and Tobago’ (Daily Express, 20 April 1992). Also interesting to note is the return to Sanskritic names among Hindus. Under the impact of Western culture many Hindus had earlier either changed their names (e.g. Krishna Deonarine became Adrian Cola Reinzi) or anglicised their Hindu names (as for instance Hari Lal as Harry, Lakshman as Lucky, Kishan as Chris, etc.). Accompanying this is the preference for ethnic Indian goods (e.g. shalvar kameez, bindi, etc. among women) and more particularly the use of traditional dress forms like the sari, dhoti-kurta or pyjama-kurtha on special occasions. Specialist shops selling ethnic Indian goods are doing good business in Chaguanas, Barataria and St Augustine. The cultural renaissance among the Indo-Trinidadians has deﬁnitely got a boost from the economic prosperity of the oil boom years. Having experienced cultural revival, the emphasis on culture has continued even after the oil bust. This is explained primarily by the nature of political competition in which the community came to be engaged and the appreciation of the possibility of ending the political monopoly of PNM as in the 1986 elections. The other religions The foregoing analysis may inadvertently give the impression that IndoTrinidadians are all Hindus. This is far from so. It is true that in 1990 Hindus constituted 58.9 per cent of the people of Indian origin and 23.7 per cent of the country’s total population. Presbyterians constituted 3.4 per cent of the country’s population, and since they are almost exclusively Indo-Trinidadians, they could be said to form 8.6 per cent of the people of Indian origin. Muslims form 5.8 per cent of the population of the country and they include both Indo- and Afro-Trinidadian elements (Central Statistical Ofﬁce 1994: xiv–xv). When the question concerns ethnicity, Presbyterian and Muslim IndoTrinidadians identify their lot with Hindus. The Presbyterian identiﬁcation with India too is often taken for granted, as the Presbyterians are generally held to be ‘tell yesterday’s Hindus’. However, the Indo-Trinidadian Muslim’s identiﬁcation with India is tenuous: apart from the partition of India and the associated communal conﬂagration there (which has been burned into their psyche, notwithstanding their inability to imagine a partitioned India) and the so-called Pakistan connection (see Jayaram 1998: 51–2), in its extreme form the ideology of Umma (literally, Islamic community), which

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has been preached by a section of the Muslim leadership, denies the concept of diaspora as applied to the Muslims. Be that as it may, the Trinidad Muslims of Indian origin can hardly ignore the large presence of Muslims in India, and of their own roots there. Tracing the roots, a serious pursuit among Indo-Trinidadians since the 1990s, is as much noticeable among Muslims as among Hindus (see Deen 1994). The concern for roots after several generations and the desire for tracing them is more than a nostalgic element in a diasporic community. It has serious implications for reinforcing ethnic identity and cultural selfconsciousness. The contemporary vibrancy of Hinduism and Islam among IndoTrinidadians is in marked contrast to the struggle for survival of these religions in the colonial era. Not only were their religions denigrated and rituals dubbed ‘heathen’, the practice of cremation was prohibited, and Hindu and Muslim marriages were not recognised until 1946 and 1936 respectively. Attempts at preserving religious traditions through the formation of organisations (e.g. the Hindu Mahasabha) with the help of preachers from India and consolidating the local religious talents were attacked as ‘communalism’. From a defensive posture in the pre-Independence era, Indo-Trinidadians are now on a free road to furthering their religions. Simultaneously with the promotion and aggrandisement of the unitary tradition of Hinduism that has indigenously evolved, the Hindus are also adding newer varieties of popular Hinduism (see Klass 1991). Thus, in spite of the forces arraigned against it and the acculturative forces to which it was subjected, Jha’s (1989: 232) prediction, whether based on a sound analysis of trends (which is doubtful) or on the incorrigible optimism of a Hindu himself (more likely), that ‘Hinduism in Trinidad has a bright future’ seems to have come true. Cultural contestations The cultural renaissance among Indo-Trinidadians seems to have addressed well their apprehensions of being ‘creolised’ as a result of economic development and Westernisation (see Vertovec 1992). In the perception of Indo-Trinidadians, the Afro-Trinidadian domination of politics has marginalised their culture. What the Afro-Trinidadian holds as ‘national’ or ‘Trinidadian’ is perceived by the Indo-Trinidadian as ‘Creole’. Not surprisingly, being endowed with the necessary demographic strength and cultural wherewithal, and the political scenario itself having become ﬂuid, Indo-Trinidadians have engaged in cultural contestations to challenge the Afro-Trinidadian hegemony. In this section I will analyse three different cases of such contestation which shed light on the politics of cultural renaissance among Indo-Trinidadians: the Arrival Day Holiday embroilment, concerning Indo-Trinidadians as a general diasporic community; the

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Trinity Cross episode, concerning Hindus mainly; and the hijab controversy, related to Muslims particularly. The holiday embroilment Since 30 May 1945, when the centenary of the arrival of Indian immigrants in Trinidad was observed, every 30 May has been observed as the Indian Arrival Day. This observance became more prominent after the Black Power Movement of 1970. Gradually, some Indo-Trinidadian associations and leaders began demanding a national holiday to celebrate the Indian Arrival Day. The obvious point of reference was the national holiday on 1 August (the Emancipation Day) to celebrate the emancipation of Africans from slavery. The argument was that there has not been commensurate acknowledgment of the presence of Indians in the country. Since the PNM government, which was dominated by Afro-Trinidadians, was not expected to concede this demand on its own, Trevor Sudama, an Indo-Trinidadian Member of Parliament, moved a motion in the House of Representatives on this matter. After being on the Order Papers for ﬁve years, the motion came up before the House on 28 October 1994. The debate over the motion and the resulting controversy shed light on the dimensions of cultural politics involving diasporic Indians in Trinidad. The case for a national holiday to celebrate the Indian Arrival was well articulated by Sudama himself.4 Public holidays, according to him, give a ‘symbolic signiﬁcance to the pervading sentiments which inform outstanding occasions’ in a country’s history. In the evolution of an ‘immigrant society’ like Trinidad, the arrival of indentured workers from India was a historical event of immense signiﬁcance. Even if it is identiﬁed with IndoTrinidadians, as a public holiday 30 May would ‘serve to sensitise other ethnic groups to the diverse inputs and contributions . . . in the historical evolution of this society’, and thus ‘contribute to fostering greater interethnic respect, tolerance and understanding’. As such, ‘the day has a wider historical signiﬁcance for the whole national community’. Sudama clariﬁed that he was ‘not seeking compensatory recognition’ for Indo-Trinidadians or ‘a quid pro quo for the declaration of Emancipation Day as a public holiday’. He went on to stress that ‘Emancipation Day is a day of enormous historical signiﬁcance not only for people of African descent but for the society at large’. He argued that he was not ‘pushing an Indian head’ or demanding an additional public holiday; rather, what he was demanding was the rationalisation of the system of public holidays. Illustratively he pointed out that in a religiously diverse society, seven of the thirteen public holidays are Christian (the New Year, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Whit Monday, Corpus Christi, Christmas and Boxing Day), which is ‘a colonial legacy’. While four others are non-religious holidays (Independence Day, Republic Day, Emancipation Day and Labour Day), there is just one holiday each for Hindu (Divali) and Muslim (Id) festivals.

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Obviously, the demand for a national holiday to celebrate the Indian Arrival Day provoked a lot of opposition, mainly, if not solely, from the nonIndo-Trinidadian population. Such a holiday, it was argued, would mean the celebration of indentured subjugation, ‘a new system of slavery’, and would create greater divisiveness in society by promoting sectional loyalties. It was feared that conceding such a holiday would trigger demands by other ethnic groups such as the Chinese, Portuguese and Syrians to commemorate their arrival. And ﬁnally, it was held by the business community that there were already too many holidays, adversely affecting productivity and undermining economic effort. These arguments are an indication of how the issue was perceived by the non-Indo-Trinidadian population. Considering the various issues raised during the debate on the motion, the PNM government set up a Select Committee of Parliament to look into the issue of public holidays. The Committee could not come to a consensus. The majority report recommended that 30 May be designated as ‘Arrival Day’ (not the Indian Arrival Day) and that Whit Monday be deleted to accommodate it. When the motion was put to vote on 1 May 1995, the Opposition boycotted the House and the motion was carried 18–0. Prime Minister Patrick Manning immediately announced that 30 May 1995 was a holiday in ‘recognition’ of the 150th anniversary of the arrival of Indians in Trinidad. The Opposition, led by Basdeo Panday, disagreed with the majority report. It supported the minority report which recommended the designation of the day as ‘the Indian Arrival Day’. Outside the House, Panday was even more trenchant in his criticisms of the recommendation which was ‘without rationale’: ‘They could call it what they want; we all know it as the Indian Arrival Day. Why not call it just that? Why are you ashamed of the word Indian? What is there about that word that the authorities ﬁnd so repulsive?’ (Trinidad Guardian, 17 May 1995: 11). If the Hindu Women’s Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago (HWO) expressed its disappointment with the designation of ‘Arrival Day’, the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) openly rejected it. The Committee’s Chairman had, in fact, questioned ‘the need to put an ethnic epithet in front of the day’ and pointed out that ‘Emancipation Day was not called the “African Emancipation Day”’. The Indo-Trinidadian leaders argued that while Emancipation unequivocally refers to the African experience of slavery in the new world and the end of that exploitative economic system, Arrival is not so unequivocal but an amorphous term. Expectedly, the UNC-NAR government which came to power in November 1995 changed the name of the holiday to ‘the Indian Arrival Day’. More important, in order to fulﬁl its election promise to the Baptists, who had demanded a national holiday to mark the Shouter Baptist Liberation Day (30 March), the government decided to remove the Republic Day from the list of national holidays. It was on 24 September 1996 that after fourteen years of independence Trinidad and Tobago decided to sever all

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constitutional ties with the British monarchy by becoming a Republic, and this day had been observed as a public holiday every year until 1996. Naturally, this added to the controversy that had been already generated by the demand for the Indian Arrival Day holiday. One aspect of the debate that created considerable anxiety among AfroTrinidadians was the call from certain quarters that since the Indian Arrival Day demand was being opposed because it was sectional in nature, the government should as well remove the Emancipation Day from the list of holidays. The Emancipation Support Committee was quick to organise a panel discussion on the subject, at which mostly Afro-Trinidadians spoke and they were all unanimous that the Emancipation Day must stay. Speaking at the panel Lloyd Best was disconcerted that after almost forty years of party politics and self-government ‘in 1995 we are forced to confront the question of keeping a holiday which for years was celebrated as Discovery Day without a murmur of protest from anyone’. He argued that the demand for abolition of the Emancipation Day holiday in a country founded on slavery is untenable. Another panellist, LeRoi Clarke, submitted that emancipation was ‘a symbol of something very dear that inspires or motivates us . . . I am an African, I can only be an African, and I want people to leave me also so that I can prosper in my self-creating self ’. The Trinity Cross episode During 1994, when preparations were afoot for celebrating the sesquicentenary of the arrival of the ﬁrst Indians in Trinidad, the question of national recognition of ‘eminent’ people of Indian origin – mention was made of Dharam Veer Sant Siewadas Sadhoo, Bhadase Sagan Maraj and Simbhoonath Capildeo – came up. Addressing the issue, Ravi-Ji of the Hindu Prachar Kendra (HPK) raised the awkward point as to ‘How could we argue for the highest award for these national stalwarts who happened to be prominent Hindus? It was a matter of conscience; I mean, the three of them being Hindus and the highest award being the Trinity Cross!’ More important, he wondered whether this infringed the constitutional guarantee of ‘right to freedom of conscience and religious belief and observance’ (Sunday Guardian, 14 August 1994: 7). The Trinity Cross, the highest of the civilian honours awarded under the Order of the Trinity, was ﬁrst established through Letters Patent issued by Queen Elizabeth II in August 1969. The Order of the Trinity replaced the British honours system and became a symbol of the Trinidad and Tobago’s independent status. Ravi-Ji felt that the Committee which deliberated on the Order of the Trinity, which was not representative of the multicultural mosaic of the country, had a certain mindset unenlightened of the realities of the country. He emphasised that Christian symbolism is operative in the very name ‘Trinity’ and its derivative Trinidad (a name given by Christopher Columbus).

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In fact, as early as 1972, Wahid Ali, who was then serving as the President of the newly founded Inter-Religious Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago (IRO) and the President of the Senate (and Acting President of the country on twenty occasions), had raised the issue (whether ‘Trinity Cross’ is ‘the appropriate of designation and design for the highest national award in the country’) with ‘certain prominent religious leaders’ and intended to take it up in the IRO (Ali 1992: 48–54). Archbishop Anthony Pantin, the only person to substantively answer Ali’s query, recognised that both ‘Trinity’ and ‘Cross’ are Roman Catholic dogmas. However, ‘since “Trinity” is but the English translation of “Trinidad” and since a cross is found among all types of decorations without any particular inference’, he felt that ‘the highest national award of our country can be interpreted in a way that has no connection with any speciﬁc religion’ (quoted ibid.: 52). Ironically, in 1977, Ali was himself selected for the award of the ‘Trinity Cross’. Though his initial impulse was to decline it, on the advice of Haji Muhammad Ysuff Francis (his ‘local Ustad [teacher]’) and on ‘the verbal assurance’ of the then Prime Minister Eric Williams ‘that the entire matter of national awards was to be reviewed’, he accepted the award. However, since the promise made by Williams had remained ‘unknown’ and ‘unheeded’ and since ‘certain Hindu voices . . . have from time to time protested against the name “Trinity Cross”’, he felt the question of his ‘retaining the “Trinity Cross” indeﬁnitely will certainly merit serious consideration’ (ibid.: 50). On 1 September 1994, Trinidad Guardian editorially reiterated the issue ‘whether the Order of the Trinity with its powerful Christian connotations is appropriate in a multicultural society where every creed holds an equal place’. The Afro-Trinidadian and Christian reaction to the debate was on expected lines. Ignoring the cynical, ironic and sarcastic comments, which trivialised the issue, the tone was by and large defensive, arguing that there is no need to change the designation of ‘Trinity Cross’: that the cross is a symbol of sacriﬁce and suffering, and is no affront to other religions unless their warped thinking makes it so; that the cross in itself is not a symbol of Christianity; that the cross is not solely a Christian symbol; and that the Trinity Cross should not be associated with the Christian cruciﬁx. But the more anxious ones felt that the parochial demands such as for changing the designation of the country’s highest award would destroy the nation. Just as the debate was heating up came the news on 30 August 1995 that Dharmacharya Krishna Maharaj, a Hindu pundit, and one of the three awardees of the ‘Trinity Cross’ on the occasion of the 33rd Independence Day – the other two being Fr. Gerard Arthur Pantin and artiste Patricia Alison Bishop – had declined to accept the award. The Dharmacharya clariﬁed that ‘he did not want his action to be seen as a rejection of the award, but as an opportunity for those in authority to create a national award that recognises the plurality of religious beliefs in this country’ (Trinidad Guardian, 31 August 1995).

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The tragedy, Ravi-Ji of HPK noted, is not in the Dharmacharya’s refusal, ‘but in the embarrassing position he has been placed, on such a sensitive issue’. ‘The greatest tragedy’, he went on to argue, is that ‘the hegemony has been so entrenched that none of the Governments who have had the responsibility to design the affairs of the nation has had the will or vision to treat with such issues reﬂecting the plural society of Trinidad and Tobago’. Accordingly, ‘It is a great day when Pundit Krishna, like Bishma Pitamaha, the grand sire of Hindu history, has arisen to address the conscience of the nation in wide-ranging national issues, through the issue of the Trinity Cross offered to him’ (Trinidad Guardian, 31 August 1995). The following day devotees of the Hindu faith made a special pilgrimage to Dharmacharya’s home to honour him for not accepting the award. The Muslim support for the Dharmacharya followed. Endorsing the Dharmacharya’s stance, Kamaluddin Mohammed (a former minister in the PNM government) observed that because of what it represents, the symbol of the Trinity Cross was unacceptable to Muslims as it would be to Hindus. Nizam Mohammed opined that ‘It [the Trinity Cross] continues to be an anachronism of true nationhood and an objectionable vestige of colonialism that ought not to be perpetuated any longer’ (Trinidad Guardian, 1 September 1995). Later, Baptists and Orishas too supported the demand for changing the designation of the national award. Changing the name of the award, legal experts opined, is not a simple matter, as it needed constitutional amendment. The UNC-NAR combine did not have the requisite majority in the Parliament to carry through such an amendment. Thus, notwithstanding the demand, yet again repeated when Panday was in power, in 1996 too the award given to band leader Peter Minshall and Chief Justice Michael de la Bastide carried the same name. The hijab controversy On 5 September 1994, when secondary schools reopened in Trinidad and Tobago, 11-year-old Sumayyah Mohammed, a Muslim girl of Indian origin, was barred from attending classes by Principal Luci Moraine of the Holy Name Convent (HNC), a Roman Catholic denominational school. The reason: Sumayyah was wearing the Muslim garb known as the hijab, which allegedly violated the prescribed school uniform. Students and parents who did not agree with the school regulations were given the option of taking a transfer to another school. It was the contention of Sumayyah’s parents that on passing the Common Entrance Examination, Sumayyah had got admission in the school of her choice, and that wearing of the hijab was a part of her religious requirement and that she had the constitutional right to practice her religion without hindrance. The HNC’s argument was that it is a Roman Catholic denomination school which enjoyed certain rights under

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the Concordat (an agreement deﬁning the relationship between the State and Church in the ﬁeld of education), including the making of rules for the administration of the school. Among these rules is a school uniform designed to suit all students of every creed and race. Hence, Sumayyah was barred from the school not because of her religion, but because she did not conform to the regulations of the school. When the efforts to settle the issue through mediation failed, the matter was taken to court by Sumayyah. Delivering the judgement on 17 January 1995, Justice Margot Warner of the Port of Spain Civil Court held that ‘The hijab will not accentuate distinction in the school’. The HNC Board of Management and its Principal ‘did not take into consideration what effect the removal of the hijab would have on the 11-year-old student’. ‘She has been wearing the hijab for the past six years and for her to remove it may have a traumatic effect on her’. Accordingly it was ruled that ‘[Sumayyah] Mohammed will be allowed to attend HNC in her modiﬁed uniform, which consists of a long skirt, long sleeves to the wrist and the headgear’. The judge understood the school’s position on maintaining discipline, but it felt ‘each case must be decided on a factual background’. HNC got the right of appeal against the order without any stay, but had to bear three-quarters of the legal cost of Sumayyah. Justice of Appeal Lloyd Gopeesingh ordered a stay of judgement, but allowed Sumayyah to continue in school. Sumayyah’s return to school on 18 January 1995 was a media event and was viewed by Muslims as a victory of sorts against the system. The hijab case generated a lot of public debate. ‘Grave concern about the discrimination against female students of the Muslim faith because of their hijab’ was expressed by the Caribbean Islamic Development Organisation. If the Muslim posture appears to be only expected, Hindus too were critical of HNC’s action: Indrani Rampersad of the HWO viewed the school’s action as ‘a retrograde step’ and an instance of ‘bigotry’. Ravi-Ji of HPK opined that in a multicultural society like Trinidad every heritage should be allowed to ﬂower. Furthermore, schools should face ‘the creative challenge in integrating the need of the different sensitivities and heritages as part of the school uniform’. Karmananda-Ji, President of the Divine Life Society, emphasised the importance of schools observing the cultural and religious rights of children. Reverend Everson Sieunarine of the Presbyterian Church said that in Presbyterian schools many Muslim girls wore hijab. In its simplest terms the case for HNC rested on the importance of maintaining discipline and avoiding divisive tendencies. Hindu (SDMS) and Presbyterian schools joined the Catholic ones in their ﬁrm stand on uniform, and it was noted that even without hijab, the uniform is modest enough. And, for Muslims who wanted their own dress code, it was suggested that they could choose a Muslim school or a government school which permits such garb. When the parents select the schools, the

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Archbishop Pantin observed, they automatically accept all its rules. It was recalled that the Principal of an Anjuman Sunaatul Jamaat Association (ASJA) run school was hounded out of her position because of her ‘questionable’ religious allegiances. In that instance the Muslim school was acting within the rights guaranteed by the Concordat! It was feared that conceding such a demand would have a ‘domino effect’. Archbishop Pantin referred to other possible requests by other groups on the grounds of religion: imagine a Rastafarian student demanding permission to attend school in dreadlocks and wearing the colours of the Lion of Judah, or a Hindu girl demanding to wear the sari as part of the uniform! Others thought of even more serious possibilities: the Muslim students demanding prayer time off during school hours and a special room facing Mecca! Iqbal Hydal, Corresponding Secretary of the Ahmadiya Anujaman Ishaat-Islam Inc. (an organisation which many Muslims consider ‘unIslamic’), agreed with the Archbishop. At the other extreme was outright condemnation. The demand for wearing hijab was termed outrageous, ‘a form of coercion to change rules to suit the coercer’s religion’. It was noted that it was not clear whether hijab is a requirement of religion, tradition, or decency. If it is a religious requirement, it was wondered why it was not observed by Muslim women in Trinidad during the past decades, and why even today it does not attract majority conformance. It was noted that the First Lady Mrs Hassanali was not less of a Muslim because she does not wear the hijab. Does it not imply, it was queried, that the non-Muslim female students are immodestly dressed? (Editorial in Trinidad Guardian, 19 January 1995). Thus, the hijab demand was dubbed an opening salvo in a campaign to impose Islamic symbols on ‘national’ institutions. The requirement of hijab was seen as a manifestation of Islamic fundamentalism, an agenda of selfseeking religionists. Since the Muslimeen insurrection of 27 July 1990 was still green in people’s memories, the hijab came to acquire ‘a very sinister and terrifying signiﬁcance’. As if in conﬁrmation of this apprehension, Muslim leaders were urged by a locally based Pakistani missionary (Imam Mustaq Ahmad Sulaimani) to unite and ﬁght the hijab issue. Thus, those defending the hijab were easily dubbed ‘militant’ and a ‘message’ was read and interpreted in their action. As in 150 years of (Indian) Muslim presence in Trinidad the uniform was never a religious matter, people began wondering ‘why is this an issue now?’ Thus, the hijab came to be feared as ‘a “Trojan Veil” which conceals hidden agendas’ (Ryan 1994: 9). Muslims, especially of the Indian origin, realised the ominous implications of this. The rejection by the Anjuman Sunaatul Jamaat Association (ASJA) (an association of Indo-Trinidadian Muslims) in October 1994 of a resolution which sought to encourage Muslim students attending Muslim schools to wear the hijab as part of their uniform, is thus understandable.

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Epilogue It is clear that the motif in all the three cases of cultural contestation involving the Indo-Trinidadians is the articulation, defence and advancement of cultural interests in ethnic terms in the context of what is perceived as the cultural hegemony of Afro-Trinidadians. However, the cases differ in the nature of their demands, the extent of involvement in them of IndoTrinidadians as a diasporic community, and the response of AfroTrinidadians. These differentials shed light on the dynamics of Indian diaspora in Trinidad. The demand for a national holiday to celebrate the Indian Arrival Day articulated the Indian case, in which, as its protagonists argued, the different sections of the Indo-Trinidadian community were united. If dissent was heard from within, it was not vocal, and it came out of the concern that Indo-Trinidadians should not be accused of demanding anything that could be interpreted as divisive and harmful to national interest. In fact, even the most articulate and vociferous among Indo-Trinidadians on this issue, as for example Parliamentarian Sudama, was careful, if not apologetic, in emphasising that it was not a sectional demand, but that the recognition that it would bring to the Indo-Trinidadian community would arrest the sense of alienation among them and would contribute to fostering national unity. Even so, Afro-Trinidadians saw in this demand a challenge, and they were defensive and even worried about it. The Trinity Cross episode was basically religious in nature, as it challenged the tenability in a multi-religious society of sectional religious symbolism in national awards. It was articulated and advanced predominantly by the Hindus, and the critical point in the episode was the rejection of the Trinity Cross award by the Dharmacharya. The challenge to the religious symbolism as well as the Dharmacharya’s rejection of the award were supported by the Muslim community. In fact, the issue was ﬁrst raised by Wahid Ali as early as in 1972, and then Hindus did not even respond to it. Ironically, however, Ali was himself a recipient of the award, though reluctantly, and in spite of pondering to return it, he never did so even at the height of the controversy. In this episode, Afro-Trinidadians were pitted against the Hindus basically as the icon of Indian identity and resistance, though Indo-Trinidadian Muslims were also targeted in the process because of their ethnic identity. The hijab issue, however, could not mobilise Indo-Trinidadians as a community. It did no doubt receive the support of the HPK and HWO, but the SDMS, running its own chain of schools, threw in its lot with the denominational school board on its emphasis on discipline and uniform. It needs to be emphasised that though the issue was initiated by an IndoTrinidadian Muslim, who won a successful legal battle against the Roman Catholic denominational HNC, the challenge did not take the expected ethnic line. Because its motif was predominantly religious in nature and

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touched the sensitive rights of denominational school boards under the Concordat, unlike the Trinity Cross case, it was not conﬁned to one ethnic group. Cutting across the ethnic divide, it hardened the religious divide between Muslims and Roman Catholics. Furthermore, the issue was eagerly taken over by and came to be identiﬁed with the more fundamentalist (and more important, Afro-Trinidadian) of the Islamic groups in Trinidad, namely the Jamaat Al Muslimeen led by Imam Yasin Abu Bakr. With the experience of the Muslimeen insurrection still being fresh in the minds of people, and the threatening stance (‘blood will ﬂow’ language) that its leadership is wont to take, the whole country became apprehensive. The Indo-Trinidadian Muslims, who had been embarrassed by the Muslimeen insurrection earlier and distanced themselves from it, somehow tried to keep distance from it. The foregoing are obviously not the only cases of cultural contestation in Trinidad involving the Indian diasporic community there. Mention may also be made of the refusal of the SDMS to teach steelpan in its schools unless ‘Indian instruments’ are also taught in other schools, and the protest against the use of Hindu symbols in Carnival bands (e.g. that of the ‘Nataraja’ in Minshall’s band Hallelujah). On the Afro-Trinidadian side the protests by Christians against the lifting of the ban on the sale of liquor on Sundays and by Muslims against Hosay (a predominantly Indo-Trinidadian Muslim celebration in which Hindus too take part) come to mind. In a multicultural democratic polity characterised by politico-economic competition more and more cases of cultural contestation are bound to arise. Trinidad will be constrained to negotiate its multiculturality periodically to redeﬁne itself as a nation and the place of the constituents in it. Given the differentials in ethnic terms – demographic, economic and political – this process of redeﬁnition will be an ongoing phenomenon, and cannot be expected to be devoid of violence. What is signiﬁcant about the cases discussed here is that they all occurred in the year of the sesquicentenary of the arrival of the ﬁrst Indians on the island of Trinidad. The ever-increasing assertion of their identity by Indo-Trinidadians and their concertedly repeated challenges appear to Afro-Trinidadians as hegemonic. With the coming to power of UNC (though as a major partner in a coalition government) and with an Indo-Trinidadian assuming ofﬁce as Prime Minister for the ﬁrst time, if the aspirations of the Indo-Trinidadians soared, the fear of Afro-Trinidadians exacerbated. The issues in themselves may not be important; what lends them signiﬁcance is their cultural symbolism and its impact on the ‘collective conscience’ of the communities concerned in the context of ethno-political competition. Evidently tremendous discussion on the question of identity and location in the national space now goes on within the contending ethnic communities. It also contributes to realignment of intra-community sectional interests. With Indo-Trinidadians being in the political driving

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seat, the tendency to be hegemonic – as some sort of cultural vengeance which sections of the Indian eagerly look for – cannot be ruled out. After all, Afro-Trinidadians are perceived to have done precisely the same in their long reign in the name of creolisation. However, the mutual recognition and appreciation of the emergent balance of power by the Indian and African elements will keep in check the hegemonic adventures on either side.

Notes 1 Since most Indo-Trinidadians in the Republic live on the main island of Trinidad, I use ‘Trinidad’ as a socio-geographical label. 2 Following Banton (1977: 148 and 151), an ethnic group may be deﬁned as ‘one that cultivates a distinctiveness based upon common descent and wants this recognised within the state its members inhabit’. By extension, ethnicity is a ‘shared quality’, ‘a condition of belonging to an ethnic group’: ‘the signiﬁcant members are conscious of belonging to the group. They believe the group to be ethnic in character and it is accepted by others as such’. While self-consciousness is constructed in terms of the symbols and meanings available to a group at a given time, what lends continuity to it is the belief in a common past (origin and descent), present (social organisation and culture), and future (political predicament). 3 It is signiﬁcant that Basdeo Panday took his oath of ofﬁce by swearing on the ‘Holy Gita’. This was viewed by literary critic Selwyn Cudjoe as ushering in ‘a new era’ in Trinidad and Tobago’s history, underlining that it was ‘a Christian as well as a Hindu nation . . .’ (Trinidad Guardian, 4 December 1995, p.14). 4 Following the debate over the motion in the House of Representatives on 28 October 1994, Sudama brought out a pamphlet containing the proceedings. All references to Sudama in this subsection are from this pamphlet.

References Adamson, A. H. (1984) ‘The impact of indentured immigration on the political economy of British Guiana’, in K. Saunders (ed.), Indentured Labour in the British Empire, 1834–1920, London: Croom Helm. Ali, W. (1992) Building Bridges in Society: Selected Speeches of Dr. Wahid Ali, San Juan, Trinidad: Wali Enterprises. Banton, M. (1977) The Idea of Race, London: Tavistock. Bisnauth, D. A. (1989) A History of Religions in the Caribbean, Kingston, Jamaica: Kingston Publishers. Central Statistical Ofﬁce (1994) 1990 Population and Housing Census: Volume II (Demographic Report), Port of Spain: Ofﬁce of the Prime Minister, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Deen, S. (1994) Solving East Indian Roots in Trinidad, Trinidad: S. Deen. Deosaran, R. (1993) A Society Under Siege: A Study of Political Confusion and Legal Mysticism, St Augustine, Trinidad: McAl Psychological Research Centre, University of the West Indies. Despres, L. A. (1984) ‘Ethnicity: what data and theory portend for plural societies’, in D. M. Lewis (ed.), The Prospects for Plural Societies, Washington, D.C.: American Ethnological Society.

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Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gosine, M. (1986) East Indians and Black Power in the Caribbean: The Case of Trinidad, New York: African Research Publications. Jayaram, N. (1998) ‘Social construction of the other Indian: encounters between Indian nationals and diasporic Indians’, Journal of Social and Economic Development 1: 46–63. —— (2000) ‘The dynamics of language in Indian diaspora: the case of Bhojpuri/ Hindi in Trinidad’, Sociological Bulletin 49: 41–62. Jha, J. C. (1989) ‘Hinduism in Trinidad’, in F. Birbalsingh (ed.), Indenture and Exile: The Indo-Caribbean Experience, Toronto: TSAR. Klass, M. (1961) East Indians in Trinidad: A Study of Cultural Persistence, Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press. —— (1991) Singing with Sai Baba: The Politics of Revitalization in Trinidad, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. La Guerre, J. (1991) ‘Leadership in a plural society: the case of the Indians in Trinidad and Tobago’, in S. Ryan (ed.), Social and Occupational Stratiﬁcation in Contemporary Trinidad and Tobago, St. Augustine, Trinidad: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies. Laurence, K. O. (1994) A Question of Labour: Indentured Immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, 1875–1917, Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers. Ryan, S. (1972) Race and Nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago, St Augustine, Trinidad: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies. —— (1991a) ‘Social stratiﬁcation in Trinidad and Tobago: Lloyd Braithwaite revisited’, in S. Ryan (ed.), Social and Occupational Stratiﬁcation in Contemporary Trinidad and Tobago, St Augustine, Trinidad: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies. —— (1991b) ‘Social and ethnic stratiﬁcation and voting behaviour in Trinidad and Tobago: 1956–1990’, in S. Ryan (ed.), Social and Occupational Stratiﬁcation in Contemporary Trinidad and Tobago, St Augustine, Trinidad: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies. —— (1994) ‘Fear of the Trojan veil’, Sunday Express, Port of Spain, 25 September 1994. Tinker, H. (1993) A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830–1920 (2nd edition), London: Hansib Publishing Limited. van der Veer, P. and S.Vertovec (1991) ‘Brahmanism abroad: on Caribbean Hinduism as an ethnic religion’, Ethnology 30: 149–66. Vertovec, S. (1992) Hindu Trinidad: Religion, Ethnicity and Socio-Economic Change, London: Macmillan. —— (1994) ‘ “Ofﬁcial” and “popular” Hinduism in diaspora: historical and contemporary trends in Surinam, Trinidad and Guyana’, Contributions to Indian Sociology 28: 123–47. Yelvington, K. A. (1993) ‘Introduction: Trinidad ethnicity’, in K. A. Yelvington (ed.), Trinidad Ethnicity, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

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Indians at home in the Antipodes Migrating with Ph.D.s, bytes or kava1 in their bags2 Carmen Voigt-Graf

Introduction Indians are one of the oldest non-European migrant groups in Australia. Already at the end of the nineteenth century, Punjabis working in agriculture were a common sight along the east coast of the continent. Since these early days, when numbers were small and most Indians were from Punjab, the Indian diaspora in Australia has undergone enormous changes, growing in numbers and diversity. Today, more than 200,000 Indians of various cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds live in Australia. They are contributing to many sectors of the economy. Indians as a whole are one of the economically most successful migrant groups in Australia. However, the differences between subgroups under the umbrella of the wider Indian diaspora are enormous and one of the aims of this chapter is to outline and analyse this diversity. Migrant routes from India to Australia, both directly and via third countries such as Fiji, have become increasingly complex. Despite the twocenturies-long history, the Indian diaspora in Australia is still developing at the turn of the millennium, growing in number and diversity almost by the day. The extent of ongoing migration justiﬁes particular attention being given to an analysis of the complexity of migration biographies in this chapter. The second major theme concerns the economic activities and success of Indians in Australia – another area where the diversity of the Indian population is apparent. Most recent migrants from India are of a highly skilled background and many work as professionals in Australia’s mainstream labour market. The twice migrant Indo-Fijians3 rely to a larger extent on their cultural capital and transnational resources to carve out a niche in the labour market. Much of what follows is based on empirical research consisting of qualitative interviews with 100 Indians in Australia and 52 of their families in India and 40 in Fiji. In this research, three migrant groups of Indian origin were compared: Punjabis from the North Indian state of Punjab, Kannadigas from the South Indian state of Karnataka, and twice migrant Indo-Fijians arriving in Australia as secondary migrants.4

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An analysis of Indian migration today underlines the blending of temporary and permanent forms of migration as well as the increasing complexity of migration biographies. Many migrants today undertake multiple migrations in their lives. For some, Australia has become a stepping stone on a route eventually reaching the United States, a country which continues to be the ultimate desired destination for many Indians. It is interesting to see how migrants make use of the strict immigration regulations in Australia in ways different from those intended by Australian policy-makers, which is consistent with Ballard’s interpretation that some migrants are best understood as entrepreneurs rather than as victims. Instead of moralising about their plight, he attempts to uncover the ways in which some migrants challenge the structures of the system by using their cultural capital, creating occupational niches and eventually making their way up through the system. It is important that some are able to do so ‘on their own terms’ rather than simply following the rules imposed on them (Ballard 1994: 8). In the Australian example, this becomes most obvious when analysing migration ﬂows. In addition, Indo-Fijians have created occupational niches in the form of ethnic businesses. Punjabis and Kannadigas, on the contrary, mostly rely on the mainstream labour market. For reasons to be explored, Kannadiga professionals manage to negotiate the labour market much better than their Punjabi counterparts. The chapter starts with an overview of the history of Indian migration to the two antipodal countries Australia and New Zealand. The more detailed analyses that follow are based on the Australian experience. This is a result not only of my own interests and expertise but also of an acknowledgement that is it impossible to do justice to the diversities and complexities of the Indian diasporas in two countries within the frame of this chapter. In the discussion of migration patterns of Indians to Australia, the increasing complexity of migration routes will become obvious in particular when looking at the different experiences of Punjabis, Kannadigas and IndoFijians, as well as the case of student migration from India to Australia. This will be followed by an analysis of the heterogeneous experiences in the Australian labour market. The diversity of experiences raises some broader questions about the appropriateness of the existing migration terminology which will be discussed in the conclusion.

Setting the scene: an overview of Indian migration to Australia and New Zealand Substantial emigration from the Indian subcontinent is a phenomenon that started in the ﬁrst half of the nineteenth century. Various types of migration have been identiﬁed (Clarke et al. 1990: 8) and have led to a situation where Indians today are living in all corners of the globe. Under the indentured labour system, Indians were brought to plantation colonies mostly within the British Empire after slavery had been abolished. Between

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1879 and 1916, Fiji saw the arrival of some 60,000 indentured labourers from India, some 40,000 of whom decided to make the colony their permanent home after the end of their contract (Gillion 1962: 214). These workers were joined by Indians who migrated independently to the colonies and usually worked as traders or administrators. They constitute the second type of migration, called free or passenger migration. A third type of emigration from India started after the Second World War and involved the migration of manual workers, professionals and businesspeople to Western countries and later to the Middle East. In the case of Australia and New Zealand, this became possible only with the abolition of racist immigration regulations in the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, with political independence of the former British colonies, Indians in countries like Fiji found themselves as unwelcome residues of colonialism and discriminated against. Some of these Indians undertook a secondary migration to industrialised countries, most Indo-Fijians resettling in Australia and New Zealand. The migration histories of Indians in Australia and New Zealand are heterogeneous in terms of both the regions of origin and the historical period of migration. The majority of migrants to both New Zealand and Australia are of the third and fourth types (labour and professional migration to industrialised countries and post-colonial migration from Fiji) though some arrived as migrants of the ﬁrst two types (colonial indentured migration and colonial free migration). In New Zealand, the numbers involved are considerably smaller than in Australia. The ﬁrst recorded Indian settled in New Zealand in 1810 (Leckie 1995: 136). Other Indians followed in the second half of the nineteenth century, mostly coming via Australia. This brought the total number of Indians to 46 in 1896. In these early days, most Indians worked as hawkers, peddlers and domestic workers (Roy 1978: 17–18). By the 1880s, restrictions on the migration of non-British immigrants were introduced and later formalised in the 1899 Immigration Restriction Act which required non-British migrants to write and sign the application form in a European language (Statistics New Zealand 1999a: 10). Only in 1986 was the immigration policy transformed. Source country preferences were removed and skills and qualiﬁcations became major criteria for immigration, thus opening New Zealand for prospective migrants from India (ibid.: 12). In 1971, only 7,807 Indians lived in New Zealand (Roy 1978: 18), but numbers increased rapidly to 30,609 in 1991 and 42,408 in 1996 (Statistics New Zealand 1999b). Just under 13,000 Indians living in New Zealand in 1996 were actually born in India, indicating a large number of twice migrants – around 15,000 from Fiji and 2,000 from other countries – and 12,000 second generation New Zealand born Indians. Apart from an increase in numbers, the growing diversity within the Indian population in New Zealand is remarkable. Prior to the 1970s, around 90 per cent of all Indians in New Zealand were Gujarati Hindus

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originating from a small coastal strip south of Surat (Roy 1978: 18–19), the remaining 10 per cent being Indo-Fijians and Punjabis, the latter coming from a few square miles in the Doaba region. By the end of the twentieth century the regional origin of Indians in New Zealand had become much more diversiﬁed. Many of the 2,000 to 3,500 annual migrants from India in the second half of the 1990s were professionals from various regions in India (New Zealand Immigration Service 2000). The major transformation, however, was caused by the mass migration of Indo-Fijians consisting of various subgroups of different religious and linguistic backgrounds. During the 1960s to 1980s, groups of Indo-Fijians arrived under temporary work permit schemes. One important group was Indo-Fijian Muslims working as halal slaughtermen in New Zealand’s meat industry which was exporting sheep and lamb to the Middle East (Levick and Bedford 1987: 14). Though overall numbers were quite small – 143 halal slaughterers in 1985 (ibid.: 16) – some of them gained residence status and later sponsored the migration of their families. Since Fiji’s political independence in 1970, ethnicity has been manipulated by political elites in Fiji and Indo-Fijians were twice ousted from political power through military coups in 1987 and then an attempted civilian coup in 2000. In the wake of the 1987 coups, violence against Indian persons and property was widespread. The 1987 coups triggered a mass emigration of Indo-Fijians, mostly resettling in the Paciﬁc Rim countries of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States (see Figure 7.1). A new wave of emigration was triggered by the attempted coup in 2000 which led to the removal of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, the ﬁrst Prime Minister of Indo-Fijian origin, and his cabinet. In terms of violence and damage to property, the latest coup was worse than the 1987 one.5 There is considerable mobility of Indo-Fijians between Australia and New Zealand, with many families split between the two countries. The Trans-Tasman Travel Agreement of 1973 allows for free movement of residents between the two countries and Indo-Fijians make substantial use of this provision. In many cases, New Zealand serves as a gateway into Australia. Moving on to the history of Indian migration to Australia, a small number of convict and recruited labourers, sailors and a few free migrants arrived during the ﬁrst half of the nineteenth century. In the second half of the nineteenth century, between two and four thousand camel drivers from the Northwest Province and the Punjab came to Australia, while arrivals from Punjab generally increased. Towards the turn of the century Indian hawkers became a typical spectacle selling their wares from door to door in rural areas. Likewise, Punjabis working as fruit pickers and cane cutters became an increasingly common sight along the eastern coast of Australia. It is estimated that some 7,000 India-born persons lived in Australia at the beginning of the twentieth century.6

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Figure 7.1 Ofﬁcial Fiji resident emigration, 1980–97 (total, Australia- and New Zealand-bound) Source: Bureau of Statistics (various years). Note: Ofﬁcial data underestimate the real extent of emigration particularly in the post-coup years. Between May 1987 and March 1989, 11,000 citizens ofﬁcially declared to have emigrated, while the real net loss of population amounted to some 29,000 (Bedford 1989: 143). This divergence is a result of the government relying on emigrants declaring their departure status correctly. Furthermore, all those who left Fiji in the aftermath of the 1987 coups on visitor visas and subsequently became residents abroad do not appear in the statistics (Chetty and Prasad 1993: 3–4). While the ﬁgures show the emigration of Fiji residents as a whole, more than 80 per cent of them were Indo-Fijians in every single year.

After Federation and the introduction of the Immigration Restriction Act, commonly known as the White Australia Policy, in 1901, migration from India virtually stopped for half a century. However, Indians already in Australia continued to work in agriculture, most of them in northern New South Wales and Queensland. They constitute the origin of today’s Punjabi communities along the east coast of Australia, the most famous being the small town of Woolgoolga with some 800 Punjabi residents. After India’s independence and partition in 1947, Anglo-Indians with one European parent were allowed to settle in Australia. In the 1950s, some Indian students and academics arrived under the Colombo Plan but only the gradual demise of the White Australia Policy in the 1960s led to an increase in permanent immigration. Since then, most Indian migrants to Australia have been professionals, qualifying for Australian residency on the basis of their skills. Recently, many Indians have undertaken a secondary migration to Australia, with Indo-Fijians being the most numerous group of twice migrants. Indians have also arrived from Malaysia, Singapore, south and

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east Africa and other countries, and some came by undertaking a third migration. Today, India-born persons, the only category for which statistics are readily available in Australia, make up less than half of the total Indian population in Australia (see Figure 7.2). Taking into consideration the existence of a large twice migrant community and the difﬁculties of determining the exact number of Indians in Australia, it can be estimated that the total Indian population at the turn of the millennium was more than 200,000. There were an estimated 110,000 India-born persons in Australia: some 60,000-second generation Indians, some 40,000 IndoFijians and about 15,000 Indians born in other countries including their Australian-born offspring. The proportion of Indians in the overall population in Australia stands at just above 1 per cent and is very similar to the proportion of Indians in New Zealand.

Complex migration routes leading into Australia Three case studies of Indian migration The history of direct migration from Punjab and Karnataka and of secondary migration from Fiji will be analysed in order to show the complexity of

Figure 7.2 Number of Indians in Australia, 1901–2000 Source: ABS 1996 and 2000; DIMA 2000a.

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Indian migration patterns and the diversity that exists under the broad umbrella of the Indian diaspora in Australia. Migration from Punjab to Australia goes back to the middle of the nineteenth century, though early migrants who arrived before the introduction of the White Australia Policy rarely undertook a permanent migration. Instead, they were leading a commuter life regularly moving back and forth between agricultural wage labour in Australia and family responsibilities in their natal villages. The bulk of their savings was sent to Punjab where their families lived. Minor sons tended to join their fathers in Australia, sometimes replacing the grandfather who would retire in Punjab. Punjabis in Australia beneﬁted from a labour shortage during the Second World War and were able to enter occupations previously closed to them due to union pressure. Their wages rose and after the war many were able to buy their own farms. At the same time, emigration from the troubled Punjab increased rapidly following India’s independence and partition. However, as long as the White Australia Policy was in place, only spouses and children of Punjabi men already settled in Australia were allowed to enter. In the last three decades of the twentieth century, increasing numbers of professional Punjabis have entered Australia under the skill migration programme. An interesting case study of Punjabi skilled migration involves graduates and academics of Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) in Ludhiana/Punjab. Today, PAU has around 1,400 academic staff while an estimated 250 families of former staff live in Sydney. As Gurcharn Sidhu, who is one of the 250 migrants from PAU, wrote: At ﬁrst it was a trickle and then it became almost a ﬂood with not only recent graduates from PAU but also many of its faculty. So great has been the recent migration from PAU that the joke is that every Singapore Airlines ﬂight from New Delhi to Sydney brings yet another member from PAU and that pretty soon an alternate PAU campus could be set up here. (Sidhu 1999: 13) Underlying the migration ﬂow was the fact that a considerable number of Punjabis had been among a batch of Indian students trained in Australia at postgraduate level in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of them later occupied key positions at PAU as professors and heads of departments. They were crucial in determining the future migration by spreading knowledge about Australia among staff and students. Two factors were then speciﬁcally responsible for starting and sustaining the ﬂow. The ﬁrst was the immigration legislation in Australia. In the early 1990s, Australia needed skilled people of agricultural background and visa application procedures were quick and most applications successful. The other factor concerned the internal administrative rules of PAU, which were favourable for migrants.

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Staff could take up to ﬁve years leave without pay while their positions would be kept vacant. Prospective migrants thus had the chance to migrate abroad on a trial basis knowing that if they were unsuccessful, their old jobs were waiting for them. This of course is a luxury that few migrants have. Some recent developments have reduced migration of PAU staff to Australia. First of all, visa procedures for Australia now can take up to ﬁve years. Canada, for which procedures currently take about two years, has therefore become the preferred option. Moreover, numbers have been reduced by a policy change introduced by the new Vice Chancellor at PAU that requires staff who take leave and travel abroad to show their visa to university ofﬁcials. If they travel on a residence visa they are asked to retire from their positions, thereby forcing prospective migrants to make up their minds before migrating. PAU staff and other professional Punjabis have settled in Australia’s major cities and they outnumber the rural Punjabi communities. Few of their fathers or grandfathers were sojourning in Australia. Instead, they are the ﬁrst generation that has migrated to Australia. Hence, they are not following established family chain migration routes like the rural Punjabis, but enter Australia on independent skill migration visas. Some of them have complex migration biographies, such as a group of highly qualiﬁed twice migrants from Singapore and Malaysia. Surinder Singh is even a thrice migrant. As he explains, his routes have led him from India to Uganda, from Uganda to the United Kingdom and eventually to Australia: I was born in Jalandhar district and lived in India until I completed my BSc. In 1953, I moved to Uganda and worked as a teacher. Employment opportunities at that time were much better in Africa than in India and wages were higher. I chose Uganda because my elder brother and my mother’s brother were already living there. They also arranged my marriage to a Punjabi girl from Kenya. . . . In 1973, we were kicked out from Uganda and ﬂed to the United Kingdom. We had relatives in London, so we did not have to stay in refugee camps like all the Gujaratis. I enrolled in a teacher training course in Britain and one year later in 1974, we came to Australia. I had always admired Australia because I am a keen sportsman myself. Migrants are much better treated in Australia than in Britain. For example we were planning to sponsor the migration of boys from Punjab to marry my daughters but the United Kingdom would not allow that. That’s why we came to Australia. While we lived in Uganda, we had always planned to go back to Punjab for retirement but since we came to Australia, I know that we are going to stay here. Like the arrival of professional Punjabis in Australia, migration from Karnataka is a recent phenomenon that gained momentum only in the late 1980s. It is closely linked to the growth of the Information Technology (IT)

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industry in the state. The city of Bangalore in particular has attracted foreign investments in the IT sector transforming the ‘garden city’ into India’s ‘Silicon City’. Directly and indirectly, this has led to the migration of IT workers from the region to developed countries. Working for transnational corporations (TNCs), employees gained skills and work experience that are in demand in countries like Australia. Since the late 1980s, an increasing number of software and IT specialists and other professionals have left Bangalore for more lucrative jobs in Australia. In contrast to Punjabi and Indo-Fijian migrants, virtually all Kannadigas are of urban background and come to Australia under the skill migration programme. In addition, some workers participate in intra-company transfers, temporarily working abroad in another branch for the same company. Others are recruited by head-hunters in India and enter Australia under temporary schemes. They do contract work and some live and work under precarious and insecure conditions because they are bound to one employer under the visa regulations, opening the possibility of exploitation. Though overall numbers of migrants from Karnataka are only about 3,000, it is a rapidly growing and dynamic migrant community. For quite a number of respondents, Australia was not the primary choice of settlement country but was considered an important step towards the ultimate aim of moving to the United States. As Tarun Ram, an IT professional in his midthirties, explains: After ﬁnishing my Bachelor in computer science in Bangalore, I wanted to do my Masters abroad. I applied for the US but did not get the visa. That’s why I applied for Australia which was much easier. After ﬁnishing my Masters, I went back to India and applied for migration as a skilled migrant. I was accepted and moved to Sydney in 1993. Two years later I became an Australian citizen. I always wanted to move to the US and this is why I became an Australian citizen. It is easier to get into the US with an Australian passport, compared to an Indian one. . . . My aim has always been to move to the US because in the IT industry, the US is so far ahead of all other countries. You don’t gain the latest knowledge when you are in Australia. No way. You need to be in the US to learn and keep up to date with the latest technology and software. I was very lucky because I was recently offered a job in the US and I am now sponsored to move there by my employer. This is what I always wanted. For some migrants, Australia is one step closer to the United States than India and Australian citizenship is a strategic choice which facilitates the move to their preferred destination. Another reason why many Kannadigas in particular regard their stay in Australia as temporary is that the recency of their migration results in a

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situation where most have migrated alone or in core family units while the rest of their extended family remains in South India. Many respondents plan to return to Bangalore, it being widely considered a very attractive city offering the possibility of a Western life-style. The long-term aspirations of many migrants are towards a career in India itself, for which work experience abroad is considered an important advantage. Many of these migrants are in their late twenties or thirties and return migration is a realistic objective. The incidence of considerable return migration to Bangalore is manifested in the existence of an association whose main objective it is to help permanently returned non-resident Indians (RNRIs). Returnees receive help to settle back into the city and social activities are organised where overseas experiences can be shared and relived. This is the only association of its kind in India. Finally, Indo-Fijians are of an altogether different background as their migration is related to political and economic discrimination in Fiji. IndoFijians are discriminated against in public sector employment and in the allocation of higher education scholarships, which leads many families to believe that Fiji does not offer a future for their children. The attempted coup in 2000 which led to the removal of both the democratically elected government and the 1997 multiracial constitution has convinced many more that Fiji does not provide a secure future. Even though Australia has not introduced special migration arrangements for Fiji citizens, migration enquiries at the Australian High Commission in Suva increased six-fold two months after the coup attempt (Fiji Times, August/September 2000: 6). Most Indo-Fijian migrants are sponsored by family members already in Australia where today some 40,000 Indo-Fijians are living. Previous contacts in Australia and Australia’s proximity to Fiji were the main reasons why IndoFijian respondents chose to resettle in Australia rather than in another country. Nahida Hanif, a 20-year-old attendant in her family’s saree shop, is a female Indo-Fijian who has sponsored her husband’s migration: My parents came to Australia with me and my two brothers in 1988. We came as tourists because the situation in Fiji was very bad. Because of my father’s qualiﬁcations, we all got residency here. We used to run a grocery shop in Nadi and when we ﬁrst got to Australia, both my parents worked in factories. When they had saved enough money, my mother opened this shop. I quit school because my mother needed me to help her in the shop. We could not afford to employ someone else. . . . My husband came to Australia in 1995 for a soccer tournament. He is a good soccer player and his team from Fiji was competing with local teams of Indo-Fijians here in Sydney. While he was visiting Sydney, he came to our shop and my mother saw him and liked him. So she started arranging my marriage to him. . . . We got married in Fiji in 1996 and he joined us in Australia in 1998. . . . We are all Australian citizens.

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With a largely unskilled background, Indo-Fijians rely on family sponsorship for their migration to Australia. As such, they are particularly affected by changes in Australia’s migration programme. The Australian government has recently limited the family migration programme, while numbers under the skill migration programme have been increased due to the greater economic inputs of skilled migrants into the Australian economy. Despite effectively being political refugees, the Australian government has not granted refugee status to Indo-Fijians. The growing diversity of migration ﬂows The three case studies were chosen to underline the complexity of Indian migration routes to Australia and the enormous diversity of biographies found under the broad category of the Indian diaspora in Australia. Only recently have migration routes starting in India and (provisionally) ending in Australia gained as much diversity in terms of the direction of ﬂows and the reasons and intentions of the move. Asked in my survey why they decided to migrate, most recent migrants from India – Kannadigas as well as Punjabis – said that they wanted to improve the educational opportunities for their children as well as their own job opportunities. For professionals in particular, competition in the labour market in India is high and the rate of progress up the professional ladder is slow. Most chose Australia because they had some contacts there and received some support on arrival, at least in the form of temporary accommodation. For quite a number of Indians, Australia was not the primary choice of a settlement country but it was easier to get a visa for there than for the United States. Many of these migrants aspire ultimately to settling in the United States where job opportunities are considered to be the best in the world. Some migrants, however, said that they came to Australia because they found it better than other countries. Australia was perceived as a clean country with a healthy environment and a safe place with a low crime-rate. A number of respondents also mentioned the fact that they had had some prior knowledge about Australia – the cricket factor should not be underestimated – and that this inﬂuenced their decision. Most Indo-Fijians, on the contrary, chose Australia due to prior contacts and its proximity to home. Many remain deeply attached to Fiji and settling close to it at least opens the possibility of regular visits. Many contemporary Indian migrants do not make a once-and-for-all decision to migrate from one country to another. Migrants are not necessarily planning to stay in Australia for good. In the 1996 census, 72.9 per cent of all Indo-Fijians in Australia had become Australian citizens, compared to 63.3 per cent of Punjabis and only 31.3 per cent of Kannadigas (ABS 2000). These ﬁgures partly reﬂect the different lengths of stay in Australia and the recent migration of Kannadigas. However, citizenship decisions are often strategic choices, even though in the case of Indo-Fijians they are an expression of a commitment to staying in Australia.

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Almost all Indo-Fijians in my survey were determined to stay there. Compared to the situation in Fiji, they highly value the security in Australia and the fact that nobody tells them that this is not their home. Most Punjabis also planned to stay in Australia. Many, however, are part of global kinship networks – a result of the historical depth of the Punjabi diaspora and of strategic marriage arrangements – and some considered joining close relatives in Canada, the United States or elsewhere. Less than half of the Kannadiga interviewees were at the time of the interview planning to stay in Australia permanently. They were either planning to move back to India or on to the United States where job opportunities for professionals were considered best. Some had taken Australian citizenship in order to facilitate their migration into the United States. Indeed, increasing numbers of migrants leave open in which country they expect to ﬁnd themselves in in the future. This is particularly important because it has repercussions on many other aspects of life among Indians in Australia. Kannadigas are less committed to staying in Australia than the other two communities and they show higher degrees of living in residential clusters in what are suburbs with relatively affordable rental accommodation. This spatial concentration reﬂects not only their reliance on social networks to counter feelings of isolation and insecurity but also the propensity to spend as little and save as much as possible in case of a return migration to India. The complexity of migration histories is reﬂected in the fact that there are not only Indian twice migrants but people who have undertaken three and more migrations. The occurrence of multiple migrations in the family history is reﬂected in the variety of birth places, especially in the case of Punjabis (see Figure 7.3). The complexity of migration is enhanced by the increasing blending of temporary and permanent forms of migration. Many migrants from Karnataka who enter on skill migration visas and are permanent residents in Australia are not planning to stay for good. On the other hand, many of those entering on temporary visas end up staying permanently. Student migration is one allegedly temporary form of migration which often becomes permanent. The number of Indian students in Australia has skyrocketed from 378 in 1990 to almost 10,000 in 1999 (Gillan et al. 2000). Australia has a 26 per cent share of the Indian market and has surpassed the United Kingdom to become the second most preferred destination for Indian overseas students after the United States (Stachow 2000). At the root of the phenomenon lie structural issues, most notably the restructuring and internationalisation of Australia’s education sector, which has become Australia’s third largest service export industry. India has been targeted by Australian educational institutions, often organising aggressive marketing campaigns, and efforts have been successful in as far as India’s burgeoning middle class is concerned. Factors making Australia attractive for Indian students include costs and visa regulations. In terms of costs,

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Figure 7.3 Country of birth of Indo-Fijians, Punjabis and Kannadigas Source: ABS 2000.

course fees and living costs in Australia are substantially lower than in many other Western countries, most importantly the United States and the United Kingdom. Moreover, visa conditions according to which international students are allowed to work for twenty hours a week during semester and full-time during vacation are attractive. The right to work used to be granted automatically but this was changed in 1999 as a result of the Australian government’s concern that some student visa holders had been abusing the system in the past by working without taking up their course of study or using study as a secondary objective to working in Australia. Now, students who want to work have to produce evidence that they have started studying and pay a fee of A$50 (DIMA 2000c). Even though regulations have been tightened, there is in principle still the possibility for people who score insufﬁcient points to enter Australia as permanent skill migrants to come as students instead, enrol in educational institutions and pay the fees while entering the workforce with or without pursuing their courses. The fact that quite a number of Indians used student visas as a pretence to work in Australia is reﬂected in the fact that Indians have the second highest cancellation rates of student visas – second only to Pakistan (DIMA 2000b: 46). A legislative change in 1999 has made it possible for student visa holders to apply for residency in Australia at the completion of their

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studies. In recognition of the fact that overseas students with Australian qualiﬁcations are preferred by Australian employers, those who apply for permanent residence within six months of completion of their studies are exempted from the skilled work experience requirement. The regulation means of course that temporary student migration has become even more inter-linked with permanent migration and is often just one step towards the goal of permanently migrating to Australia. Student migration is an example where migrants become agents creatively opening routes into Australia using regulations that were put in place for other purposes. In addition to using student visas as a means to permanent migration, Indians have shown a great deal of imagination in their bid to migrate or speed up visa application procedures. It is common knowledge that the Australian High Commission in Delhi is hopelessly understaffed and unable to cope with the number of visa applications.7 Procedures therefore take much longer – currently up to ﬁve years for skilled migrants – than in many other countries. Some Indians are therefore prepared to pay a middleman in another country to lodge the application for them. In Hong Kong middlemen fees are approximately IR50,000 or A$2,000. The successful completion of these applications depends upon the client’s ability to attend the interview with the Australian Embassy or High Commission in that places which further inﬂates the costs and depends on their ability to secure a visitor’s visa for the trip.8 Summing up, migration patterns from India to Australia have become very complex and diverse, as the three case studies of my research show. Moreover, temporary and permanent forms of migration have become increasingly interlinked. Importantly, many prospective migrants have learned how to make best use of Australia’s immigration regulations and to reach their aims of migrating permanently by using regulations on their own terms and with outcomes not intended by the policy-makers. The cases of Indians entering on students visas or the application through middlemen in other countries are examples of prospective migrants challenging structures and overcoming hurdles put in their way.

Banana farmers, taxi drivers, spiceshop owners and IT professionals: economic activities of Indians in Australia Comparing Punjabis, Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians The three groups of Indian migrants – Punjabis, Kannadigas and IndoFijians – not only have highly different migration histories but display enormous differences in economic activities and success in Australia. These differences can be traced back to their qualiﬁcations and background, their respective migration histories, as well as the economic situation in the home region.9 In Australia, migrants from India are highly qualiﬁed and are overrepresented in professional occupations. In 1996, 38.6 per cent of India-

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born migrants aged 15 and over were professionals or associate professionals compared to 29.2 per cent of the total population (DIMA 2000a: 20–1). The proportion of the India-born population with higher qualiﬁcations10 was 42.9 per cent in 1996, compared to 16.7 per cent for the total Australian population (DIMA 2000a: 16). This shows the high educational background of Indian migrants in general, though there are important differences between the subgroups: an amazing proportion of 74.7 per cent of Kannadigas held higher qualiﬁcations in 1996, almost matched by Punjabis with 71.4 per cent. The respective ﬁgure for Indo-Fijians was 47.5 per cent (ABS 2000). Among my respondents in Sydney, all Kannadigas and most Punjabis were university-educated. In contrast, Punjabis in the farming community of Woolgoolga were predominantly without formal qualiﬁcations and most of them worked as banana-farmers. Indo-Fijians are in an intermediate position with about one-third having no qualiﬁcations, and the rest being either vocationally trained or educated at universities. These different qualiﬁcation levels are reﬂected in the migration history to Australia. Recent migrants from both Punjab and Karnataka were granted residence visas on the basis of their qualiﬁcations. Unqualiﬁed people face the immigration barriers in Australia most strongly and their only chance to be granted residency is to be sponsored as family migrants – an option that was used extensively by Indo-Fijians and the old farming Punjabi communities before the recent changes in the immigration legislation took effect. The different qualiﬁcation levels translate into different occupational categories in the labour market (see Figure 7.4). As the most highly qualiﬁed group, Kannadigas are over-represented in the professions. The small number of Kannadiga managers and administrators can be explained by their relatively recent arrival in Australia. Punjabis on the other hand, of whom more than 70 per cent have higher

Figure 7.4 Some occupational categories of Punjabis, Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians in 1996 Source: ABS 2000.

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qualiﬁcations, display a different picture: there are fewer professionals among them, but more managers and administrators, possibly reﬂecting their earlier arrival, and a surprisingly high proportion of labourers and related workers. What are the reasons for this differing success in the Australian labour market? Migrants from Karnataka are not only the most highly qualiﬁed group but they also come from a dynamic region in India that is home to a large sector of globally competitive industries. Many recent migrants from Bangalore had worked for a multinational corporation and came to Australia with relevant qualiﬁcations and work experience. Most of them have found employment in the professional sector even though some had to start with a lower position than they had held before migration. The success of the Kannadigas demonstrates that skills have to some extent become globalised, in the sense that qualiﬁcations and work experience gained in an Indian city that has been penetrated by TNCs and global capital are relevant in the Australian context.11 In the light of increasing competition in the professional labour market in India and the high number of unemployed or underemployed professionals there, emigration has become a strategy, or for some a necessity, to maintain their class position. The recent Punjabi migrants are not as successful as Kannadigas: oneﬁfth of the interviewees were working as train guards or taxi drivers despite being tertiary educated. Many highly educated migrants from the Punjab were forced into unqualiﬁed occupations, while Punjabi twice migrants from Singapore and Malaysia were more successful ﬁnding employment in the professions. The accumulated experience of former PAU staff presents a good case study of the migration experience of Punjabis in general who have settled in Sydney. Out of the 250 former PAU staff in Sydney, an estimated two-thirds work as train guards, taxi-drivers or Australia Post employees. Since so many former lecturers from PAU are earning their living as taxi drivers, one particular taxi stand in Sydney’s western suburb of Blacktown is informally known as the ‘Ph.D. taxi stand’. In other words, only few migrants from PAU managed to ﬁnd work in their professions. Some did however ﬁnd semi-professional work related to their ﬁeld of expertise. There are a number of reasons for this situation. First of all, the professional background of PAU staff is agriculture-related – a ﬁeld in which there are not many jobs in Sydney. Second, Punjabis possibly encounter more discrimination in the labour market than other Indian migrants. Much discrimination in the Australian labour market is based on language. The level of English language skills is generally higher among South Indian migrants compared to North Indians. Moreover, turban-wearing Sikhs in particular are a rather visible minority, as a consequence of which they face more discrimination. A distinguishing feature of Indo-Fijians is their high level of self-employment: half of the interviewees in my survey were self-employed, many of

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them running a small business in the ethnic niche market that caters for an Indian clientele, such as a spice-shop, Indian fashion shop or Hindi movie video-library. In fact, if not for anything else, Indo-Fijians are commended by India direct migrants for operating these businesses which give all migrants of Indian origin the chance to buy the necessary food ingredients or rent Hindi movies without travelling from one end of town to the other. There are as many as 200 shops selling typically Indian goods in Sydney. Before the large inﬂux of Indo-Fijians starting in 1987, the number of shops was a mere fraction of today’s number and observers of the situation speak of a wave of openings of new shops since 1987. Using transnational resources in the labour market While most India-direct migrants entered the Australian labour market in areas where transnational networks are of little use, overseas contacts and transnational networks are important for businesses catering for the Indian niche market in Australia. The case of an Indo-Fijian-owned business is a good example of how transnational family links can work: the family in Sydney owns two Indian fashion shops which are managed by Gazala and her daughter. Gazala’s sister Nahida owns a fashion shop in Nadi/Fiji. All garments are directly imported from India and the two sisters travel there at least twice a year to order the supplies, whose export is organised by a middleman. Apart from placing their orders together thereby increasing their bargaining power to get better prices, the sisters cooperate in various other ways, including a pooling of capital if necessary as well as information and goods exchange. Like most Indo-Fijians in Fiji, their ancestors cut all ties and personal contacts to India on the day they embarked on their ship voyage to Fiji a century ago. The two sisters therefore had to establish new contacts during their visits to the subcontinent. They feel that their Indian background and an understanding of Indian business culture were helpful, if not necessary, in their dealings with the Indian market. Their cultural capital by virtue of being part of the global Indian diaspora as well as transnational family cooperation are important factors for the success of the shops in Sydney and in Fiji. It is interesting that twice migrant Indo-Fijians use these resources to a larger extent than India-direct migrants, which is a result of their higher rate of self-employment. This in turn is a consequence of the fact that many Indo-Fijians are unskilled and opening a small business helps avoid working in badly paid jobs, in particular as many highly value the independence associated with business ownership despite the realities of low proﬁt margins and long working hours. Moreover, more Indo-Fijian migrants than India-direct migrants have a family business history. Few migrants from India have a background in business and they only enter that ﬁeld in Australia in the event of a lack of alternatives. Those who have set up a professional business, such as a computer consultancy, do not

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rely on transnational family networks for the success of their business. Most ﬁnd professional jobs in the mainstream labour market, without using their cultural capital and transnational contacts. However, transnational contacts are economically beneﬁcial at least for some of the migrants’ family members in India. There are numerous businesses in India that could not operate without transnational family links. One such venture involved two brothers, Sridhar in Sydney and Manju in Bangalore. Sridhar works as an accountant and has a friend in a head-hunting company in Melbourne looking for IT professionals in India. Since Manju works in the IT industry in Bangalore, contact was established between the two. Manju continues to be employed in the IT company but has established a private recruitment agency, head-hunting IT professionals required by the Melbourne-based company. Manju uses his extensive contacts in the computing ﬁeld and has arranged the migration of some of his former university colleagues. While this case shows potential beneﬁts arising from transnational contacts, the number of business ventures based on these remains low. To sum up, migration legislation in Australia favours highly skilled migrants and this is clearly reﬂected in the recent migrant groups from Punjab and Karnataka. Punjabis have problems ﬁnding employment based on their qualiﬁcations, and some are forced to do work for which they are clearly overqualiﬁed, while many Kannadigas have entered the upper segment of Sydney’s labour market. Most Indo-Fijians on the other hand came as family migrants and have fewer formal qualiﬁcations. Many have established their own businesses, catering for the Indian ethnic market. These are the ones most likely to use transnational networks for economic purposes. Most transnational family businesses are based in Australia and Fiji, while contacts to India have only recently been established as few Indo-Fijians have kept personal links to India during their century-long stay in Fiji.

Conclusion: many Indian diasporas down under Apart from providing an overview of Indian migration to Australia and New Zealand, the main aim of this chapter was to analyse the complexities of migration biographies and economic activities of three groups of Indian migrants in Australia. In both Australia and New Zealand, Indians were one of the earliest non-European migrant groups. In New Zealand, most Indians came from Gujarat, and more recently the country witnessed the arrival of considerable numbers of Indo-Fijians. Today the latter constitute the largest single group of persons of Indian origin. In Australia, most early migrants came from the Punjab. After the end of the White Australia Policy in the early 1970s, migrant numbers from a wide range of backgrounds and regional origins have settled in Australia. Punjabis, Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians were used as examples to show the diversity that exists under the umbrella of the Indian diaspora. In the past, most

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Indian migrants entered Australia under the family or skill migration schemes. Today, the situation has become more complex as some migrants come under permanent schemes without intending to stay in Australia. Others come as students on temporary visas with the intention of becoming permanent residents. Indian migration to Australia is not a one-way street any more and for some it is only one of a number of migrations undertaken during their working life. This increasing complexity can partly be attributed to the greater ease and lower costs of travel facilitating consecutive migrations as well as the ﬂows of information that reach even remote villages in India. The Indian diaspora down under is not yet an established community because new arrivals from the subcontinent continue to increase not only the number but also the diversity of the diaspora on an almost daily basis. The ﬁndings on the experiences of the three migrant groups discussed in this chapter can be summarised as follows. Some Punjabis in Australia are offspring of earlier generations of settlers whose migration preceded the epoch of global economic restructuring and the introduction of the White Australia Policy. For several decades, they mostly relied on family migration schemes and more recently have arrived as skilled migrants. Their migration has been driven by economic and political crises in Punjab as well as the constraints of Australian immigration regulations. Indo-Fijian migration to Australia is best regarded as a historical extension of longterm bilateral links, Fiji being part of Australia’s (and New Zealand’s) geographical zone of inﬂuence. When post-independence policies triggered large numbers of Indo-Fijian emigrants, Australia and New Zealand were the obvious choices. One dimension of ongoing Indian migration to Sydney that started in the 1980s seems to be partly a by-product of global economic restructuring: some Indian migrants of professional urban middleclass background are prompted to make the decision to migrate by virtue of declining living standards in India – competition on the labour market, over-population and pollution (now even in the garden city Bangalore) – which are a result of India’s increasing liberalisation and economic restructuring. They are looking for places where their skills are needed, and one such place is Sydney. However, they are potential return migrants, with India’s rapidly growing IT sector providing incentives for some to continue their careers there. Recent decades have witnessed a number of changes in migration ﬂows, including the higher absolute numbers involved, the much greater diversity of the ﬂows and the uncommitted nature of many migrations. All these are to an extent a result of globalisation processes. Nonetheless, the direction of the ﬂows is still largely dependent on immigration legislation in the potential countries of resettlement. Apart from the number of migrants to be accepted under the various categories, the Australian government regulates qualiﬁcation recognition procedures that have deterred or attracted applicants. For example, the regulations in Australia governing overseas

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students have made Australia an attractive country for Indian students. On the other hand, migrants often ﬁnd their way around these regulations or some use them imaginatively, even subversively, for their own purposes, which differ from those intended by the Australian government. People entering Australia on student visas but entering the workforce on arrival are a good example of migrants using regulations on their own terms. Likewise, strategic decisions on citizenship are taken and migrants often have other purposes in mind when becoming Australian citizens than those the Australian government would have wished to achieve with the citizenship provisions. In terms of labour market integration and success, Punjabis are the oldest group of Indian migrants and have in the past settled along the east coast of Australia and engaged in farming. In recent decades, professional migrants from Punjab have encountered difﬁculties in ﬁnding appropriate employment. Some are forced to do unqualiﬁed work. Compared to the more successful Kannadigas, it was suggested that this is partly due to Punjab’s agriculture-based economy as many Punjabi professionals are trained in ﬁelds that are not relevant in the Australian labour market. In contrast, migrants from Karnataka, most of whom have come directly from Bangalore, have left an economically dynamic region of India and have arrived with skills and experience in ﬁelds that are valued in the Australian labour market. As secondary migrants, Indo-Fijians are accustomed to living in a different environment and are open to outside inﬂuences. They tend to have fewer qualiﬁcations than India-direct migrants, yet most of them are successful in ﬁnding a job in their trade. Many have established small businesses that cater for the needs of all Indians in Sydney. However, an involvement in transnational networks was not a major factor affecting economic success of Indian diaspora members whether as business owners or as employees.12 It is more likely that their non-migrant friends and relatives beneﬁt from their transnational contacts. The enormous complexity of migration experiences raises some broader questions related to the Indian diaspora. Temporary and permanent forms of migration blend into each other to such an extent that it is hard to determine who belongs to a diaspora and who does not. As has been examined here, today’s migrants take a long time to decide on the permanence of their migration and many are prepared to move to any place where economic opportunities are favourable. This includes return migration, especially in the case of migrants who initially left a dynamic region in India such as Bangalore. Under these circumstances, the question as to who really is part of the Indian diaspora is a difﬁcult one. Moreover, the enormous diversity under the broad umbrella of the Indian diaspora even in one country like Australia makes generalisations almost impossible. Rather than speaking of an Indian diaspora in Australia, it is more appropriate to speak of a multitude of diasporas of Indian origin which can be qualiﬁed by their geographical extent. With regard to the three case

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studies dealt with in this chapter, Punjabis are the oldest and mostestablished Indian community in Australia. They are part of a global Punjabi diaspora. Kannadigas, on the other hand, are yet to establish deep roots in Australia. Many are transients who regard Australia as one step in the direction of reaching their ultimate dream of migrating to the United States. A considerable number of Kannadigas return to Karnataka to continue their careers in the state’s booming IT industry close to their extended families. With their professional background, Kannadigas can successfully enter the professional labour market in many major cities of the world. They can therefore be best described as a Kannadiga world city diaspora. Indo-Fijians, ﬁnally, had largely lost their contacts with India during their century-long stay in Fiji. They continue to be discriminated against in their country of birth and many leave Fiji in search of equal treatment and security. They have found this in the Paciﬁc Rim countries, most importantly in Australia. They are best described as an Indo-Fijian Paciﬁc diaspora.

Notes 1 Kava is the traditional drink of Fiji, the consumption of which Indo-Fijians have long enjoyed. In Sydney, kava is consumed regularly in many Indo-Fijian households. 2 Many thanks to Professor Eric Waddell of the University of the Sydney for his comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 3 The term ‘twice migrant’ was coined by Bhachu (1985) referring to East African Sikh migrants in the United Kingdom. When used for Indo-Fijians, it does not imply that individual members of the community have undertaken two migrations in their lifetime. The secondary migration might well have occurred a few generations after the ﬁrst. 4 The ﬁeldwork was carried out for a Ph.D. thesis in Geography at the University of Sydney. It included 88 interviews in Sydney (20 with Punjabis, Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians each and 28 with other Indians) and 12 interviews with Punjabis in the small town of Woolgoolga in northern New South Wales. In addition, some tailor-made statistics on the three groups of Indian migrants in Australia were purchased from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, based on the 1996 census (ABS 2000). For reasons of anonymity, the names of individual respondents have been changed. 5 For the resettlement experience of Indo-Fijians in Australia, see Voigt-Graf (2001). 6 For general overviews of Indian migration to Australia, see Awasthi and Chandra (1994), Bilimoria (1996), Bilimoria and Voigt-Graf (2001). For Punjabi migration in particular, see de Lepervanche (1984) and Gabbi (1998) 7 This is of course one way to limit the number of migrants from India instead of applying country quotas that would be considered discriminatory. Procedures are slow and cumbersome to an extent that many Indians consider it a major achievement to be granted a tourist visa for Australia. 8 The strategy does not work for everyone. Gurjeet Singh applied through a middleman in Paris but France did not grant him a tourist visa and he was unable to go for the required interview at the Australian Embassy. His attempt to migrate quickly to Australia failed and he was going through the cumbersome process with the Australian High Commission in Delhi instead.

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9 It is worth mentioning that in New Zealand, the stereotype of Indians as shopkeepers is widespread there and in the early days many Gujaratis were indeed involved in retail distribution as hawkers, greengrocers or in supermarkets while some went into market gardening. Since the 1960s, many Indians already in New Zealand acquired professional skills and most new migrants were professionals (Leckie 1995: 146). Indo-Fijians display similar patterns as described for Australia below. 10 Higher qualiﬁcations are deﬁned as having a university degree, undergraduate diploma or associate diploma. 11 It will be interesting to observe developments in this area. Employment opportunities for migrants have been thwarted by the demand for ‘local work experience’. Currently, there is a huge under-supply of IT and related professionals in Australia and consequently the demand for local experience has been relaxed. It is very likely though that once enough professionals in these ﬁelds are educated in Australia, those from overseas will gradually be excluded by virtue of making local experience a requirement. This has long been used as a way of excluding migrants from many positions. While the regulation as such cannot be classiﬁed racist or anti-migrant, the outcome certainly is. On the related issue of skill accreditation procedures, see Iredale (1997). 12 Transnational networks are extremely important in the family, cultural and religious spheres, none of which were dealt with in this chapter.

References and further reading Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (1996) 1996 Census of Population and Housing, CDATA 96, Canberra: ABS. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2000) 1996 Census of Population and Housing: Ethnicity Thematic Proﬁle for Indo-Fijians, Punjabis and Kannadigas (specially ordered), Sydney: ABS. Awasthi, S. P. and A. Chandra (1994) ‘Migration from India to Australia’, Asian and Paciﬁc Migration Journal 3(2–3): 393–409. Ballard, R. (1994) Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain, London: C. Hurst. Bedford, R. (1989) ‘Out of Fiji . . . A Perspective on Migration after the Coups’, Paciﬁc Viewpoint 30(2): 142–53. Bhachu, P. (1985) Twice Migrants: East African Sikh Settlers in Britain, London: Tavistock. Bilimoria, P. (1996) The Hindus and Sikhs in Australia, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Bilimoria, P. and C. Voigt-Graf (2001) ‘Indians in Eastern Australia’, in J. Jupp (ed.), The Australian People, 2nd edn, Sydney: Angus and Robertson. Bureau of Statistics (various years) Fiji Tourism and Migration Statistics, Suva: Bureau of Statistics. Chetty, N. K. and S. Prasad (1993) Fiji’s Emigration: An Examination of Contemporary Trends and Issues, Suva: Population Studies Programme, School of Social and Economic Development, University of the South Paciﬁc. Clarke, C., C. Peach and S. Vertovec (1990) ‘Introduction: themes in the study of the South Asian diaspora’, in C. Clarke, C. Peach and S. Vertovec (eds), South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Lepervanche, M. (1984) Indians in a White Australia, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin

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Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) (2000a) Community Proﬁles, 1996 Census: India Born, Canberra: DIMA. Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) (2000b) Population Flows: Immigration Aspects, Canberra: DIMA. Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) (2000c) DIMA Fact Sheet 56: Overseas Students in Australia, Canberra: DIMA, accessed at www.immi. gov.au Gabbi, R. S. (1998) Sikhs in Australia, Melbourne: Aristoc Press. Gillan, M., B. Damachis and J. McGuire (2000) ‘Australia in India: A Case Study of the Commodiﬁcation and Internationalisation of Higher Education’, paper presented at the Asian Studies Association of Australia Biennial Conference, Melbourne. Gillion, K. L. (1962) Fiji’s Indian Migrants: A History to the End of Indenture in 1920, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Iredale, Robyn (1997) Skills Transfer: International Migration and Accreditation Issues, Wollongong: University of Wollongong Press. Leckie, Jacqueline (1995) ‘South Asians: Old and New Migrations’, in S. W. Greif (ed.), Immigration and National Identity in New Zealand: One People, Two Peoples, Many Peoples?, Palmerston: Dunmore Press. Levick, W. and R. Bedford (1987) ‘Fiji Labour Migration to New Zealand in the 1980s’, New Zealand Geographer 44(1): 14–21. New Zealand Immigration Service (2000) Research and Information, accessed at www.immigration.govt.nz Roy, W. T. (1978) ‘Indians in New Zealand’, Journal of New Zealand Federation of Historical Societies 1(8): 16–20. Sidhu, G. . (1999) ‘The Story of Sikhs Settling in the Sydney Area: Anecdotal and Personal Recollections’, Magazine of the 12th Australian Sikhs Sports Carnival. Stachow, R. (2000) Personal communication from Second Secretary (Immigration), Australian High Commission, New Delhi, April. Statistics New Zealand (1999a) New Zealand Now: People Born Overseas, Wellington: Statistics New Zealand, accessed at www.stats.govt.nz Statistics New Zealand (1999b) New Zealand Ofﬁcial Yearbook On the Web 1999, accessed at www.stats.gov.nz (11 February 2000). Voigt-Graf, C. (2001) ‘In Search of a Place to Call Home: The emergence of an Indo-Fijian transnational community’, in R. Iredale, C. Hawksley and S. Castles (eds), Migration in the Asia Paciﬁc: Population, Settlement and Citizenship Issues, Sydney: Edward Elgar.

Chapter Title

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Indian immigrants in the United States The emergence of a transnational population Johanna Lessinger

Introduction Early in 2000, a small but signiﬁcant political ﬂap arose in India over fundraising which Indian immigrants in the US had been carrying out on behalf of India’s prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Signiﬁcant numbers of IIT alumni now live in the United States, where many of them have become extremely prosperous through involvement in California’s Silicon Valley computer and information industry (Dutt 2000: 24; Padmanabhan 2000: 22; Rekhi 2000: 24). In return for raising needed funds, alumni groups strongly urged that the IITs be restructured to reﬂect more closely the mix of science and entrepreneurship prevalent in many American universities and business schools. The Indian scientiﬁc establishment, still imbued with older notions of pure science, responded with outrage at a proposal that seemed redolent of American arrogance and cultural imperialism. The mini-uproar threw into relief a series of issues: the special status of Non-Resident Indian (NRI) immigrants in the US in the eyes of the Indian government; the advantageous structural position many well-to-do Indian immigrant professionals now occupy, within both the US and the global economy; and the profound ambivalence with which these émigrés are regarded in India itself. Conﬂicts such as this, which pit transnationals against a homeland which has considered them a national resource and has tried to incorporate them into the homeland economy, are almost inevitable (comparable examples are found in Haiti and the Philippines; Basch et al. 1994). This incident also has bearing on a more scholarly debate about the extent to which globalization and transnationalism break down national identities and traditional cultural boundaries.

Funding the IITs The IITs – India’s premier state-funded technical universities – continue to turn out superbly trained science and engineering graduates who, although they often have difﬁculty ﬁnding adequate positions in India (Bidwai

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2000), are nevertheless in great demand among universities and research and development companies in the US and Europe. The IITs themselves estimate that 25–30 per cent of their alumni ultimately migrate, most to Western countries (Padmanabhan 2000). Informal estimates put the ﬁgure far higher. This outﬂow of the highly trained young, who might otherwise help India compete in the global scramble for economic growth, epitomizes, depending on one’s angle of vision, either a ‘brain drain’ which weakens India or a favourable trend which marks India’s contribution to a transnational class of high-tech entrepreneurs and gives what is still a poor country privileged access to the global economy. In 1999, several groups of highly successful IIT alumni in the US, primarily people who have become super-rich through their work over the last ﬁfteen to thirty years in information technology and the American computer industry, responded to an Indian government request and began a large-scale fund-raising campaign to mobilize donations for the IITs. These institutions’ government-subsidized training has made many NRIs’ migration and subsequent professional success abroad possible (Dugger 2000) and helped position them as part of a diasporic elite. The proffered help from alumni groups comes at a time when the IITs are struggling ﬁnancially, facing reduced governmental subsidies and fending off accusations that their teaching and facilities no longer meet international scientiﬁc standards. There are strong suggestions in some circles, both Indian and foreign, that the IITs should be wholly privatized.1 The issue became more controversial, however, when the alumni associations, having raised several million dollars for their former institutions, and promised more, also suggested publicly that overseas alumni be involved in restructuring the IITs along American lines. As Kanwal Rekhi, Silicon Valley millionaire and Mumbai IIT alumnus, told the weekly India Abroad:2 We were clear that if we raised the money, we would also like to the IITs run as autonomous bodies that look to the future – the way Stanford University, the Harvard Business School or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are run. . . . The curriculum also needs to be reoriented toward the future. . . . IIT students should be trained like entrepreneurs. They should not only be technically savvy, but also be taught how to run businesses. (Rekhi 2000: 24) Both Indian politicians and Indian scientists expressed resentment, seeing the remarks as the harbinger of an attempted takeover of the Indian scientiﬁc establishment and of India’s burgeoning information technology industrial sector on the part of American-based NRI entrepreneurs. These fears gain weight from the fact that the US is engaged in both increased trade relations and increased competition with Indian information tech-

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nology ﬁrms.3 In its glory days of growth, from 1995 to 2000, the information technology (IT) business in the US relied heavily on the labour of young Indian software engineers, some working in India, others working in the US with temporary work permits. Many suspected that US-based IT ﬁrms wanted to wholly engulf the premier technical training institutions in India for their own beneﬁt. To many, Rekhi’s comments also reinforced the perception in India that NRIs are crassly materialistic, interested only in earning money, and that they have little or no commitment to the economic development and modernization of India, despite their rhetoric of ‘giving back’ to the IITs via alumni fund-raising. There is legitimate concern that, just at the point when a growing India-based computer and information technology sector might offer enough hope and employment to keep a generation of young Indian scientists at home, student ambition to emulate these wealthy NRIs and their values may spur increased out-migration. The controversy further highlights the divided cultural, national and transnational loyalties of NRIs in the US, who are often torn between a commitment towards the technical and business values of their adopted America, nostalgia for a beloved Indian homeland, and membership in the global world of high-tech entrepreneurship. This world is Americaninﬂected but international – and impatient of the restrictions on proﬁt posed by nationalist interests or local cultures. The episode re-emphasized what the Indian government already knew: any ofﬁcial effort to reclaim these immigrant entrepreneurs, their money and their skills, has a price.

The Indian population in the US Before examining the issue of transnationalism and Indian-Americans, it is important to delineate where Indian immigrants are located, socially and spatially, within the United States. Certainly, not all of the more than 1 million Asian Indian immigrants4 now living in the US are Silicon Valley millionaires. Like other post-1965 ‘new immigrant’ populations in the US, Asian Indians are internally segmented by class, as well as by language, region of origin and religion (see an early discussion of this in Fisher 1980, a more recent discussion in Leonard 1997). People from virtually every Indian region, caste and religious community are now represented within the US immigrant population.

Divisions of class Although the successful and fabulously wealthy Indian-American immigrant entrepreneur is currently the ﬁgure of popular imagination, admiration, and envy in India, the actual population of Indian migrants in the US is far more diverse and less uniformly privileged. The professionals are highly visible in American society. They range from wealthy doctors, ﬁnancial

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consultants, engineers and executives to middle-class university professors, insurance salesmen, and mid-level civil servants. Those at the top, particularly in medicine, earn as much or more than comparable US-born professionals (Bouvier and Simcox 1994).5 Like the professionals, Indian-American entrepreneurs occupy a variety of positions, some as the founders of high-tech industries, others as owners of chains of hotels, urban real estate, import-export ﬁrms, construction companies, or manufacturing plants. Others at a humbler level operate a single gasoline station or grocery store but nevertheless pride themselves on being independent businessmen (Lessinger 1992c). Having ‘a business of one’s own’ not only confers status but is often an escape route for those unable to ﬁnd salaried professional work. The status of self-employed entrepreneur helps deﬁne people as middle-class in their own eyes and in the eyes of fellow immigrants, however precarious their enterprises and incomes. Entrepreneurs are often able to launch their ﬁrst business with the help of accumulated savings from their extended families, spread around the world from India to Africa, the Middle East and various parts of the US; the business then offers a vital toehold in the American economy, a vital resource to the entire kin group. The most prosperous Indian-Americans and their narratives of professional or entrepreneurial success and smooth economic integration have been the main focus of earlier studies of the Indian immigrant population in the US (Saran 1985; Helweg and Helweg 1990); the actual class variation within ‘the community’, which seems to be increasing with time,6 has often been overlooked by scholars and downplayed by Indian immigrants themselves. Although people in India ﬁnd it almost impossible to believe, there are also sizeable numbers of Indian immigrants who hold working-class jobs – often poorly paid or insecure — as security guards, taxi drivers, factory workers, store clerks, hotel or restaurant workers. Writers such as Leonard (1997) and Prashad (2000) believe that the increased number of Indians coming to the US on the basis of family reuniﬁcation, rather than through professional preference quotas, has brought more members of India’s lower middle class to the US. However, if one enquires about the social origins of Indian immigrant taxi drivers, restaurant waiters or night clerks in hotels, they do not seem markedly different from their more successful fellow ethnics, despite periodic assertions by Indian community leaders that the less fortunate in working-class jobs are somehow atypical or have brought their troubles on themselves.7 In practice slight differences in class background – a small town rather than metropolitan origin, consequent access to less sophisticated information networks, slightly less ﬂuent English, a degree from a provincial technical college rather than a major university – are differences which get ampliﬁed after migration and may set the stage for some people’s downward social mobility as they are forced to settle for distinctly non-middle-class work after arrival in the US.

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In large urban areas such as New York, these less prosperous or downwardly mobile Indians are economically indistinguishable from large numbers of other new immigrants who ﬁll the lower ranks of the city’s service and manufacturing sectors (Lessinger 1999). Their experiences, paralleling those of other newly arrived groups as diverse as Russians, Dominicans or Haitians, undermines an Indian immigrant discourse of exceptionalism and ‘model minority’ status in the US. For those on this end of the socio-economic scale, transnationalism has a different meaning and context. With little money to spend on visits ‘home’ and even less to invest in India, these immigrants may remain close to relatives, events and tastes in India, they may emphasize their ethnic identity in the US, but they are rarely in a position to wield inﬂuence in India.

The earliest migration The ﬁrst Indian immigrants to come to North America arrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, largely from agricultural areas in the Punjab. These early Sikh and Hindu migrants began as labourers in railway construction, in lumbering and in agriculture in western Canada and the north-western US. By the 1920s many of these Punjabis had become farm owners themselves (Jensen 1988; La Brack 1988; Leonard 1992, 1997). Today their descendants remain in the agricultural valleys of California, as well as in south-western states such as Colorado and Texas. As Gibson’s 1988 study of California Punjabi school children notes, this rural population, insular and far from rich, is still subject to racial prejudice in parts of California. After 1965 an inﬂux of new Punjabi Sikh immigrants, propelled by the Green Revolution’s restructuring of agriculture as well as political strife in the Punjab, strengthened Sikh religious and ethnic identity in the area (Leonard 1997).

The post-1965 migration The group of Indian immigrants who are most visible and numerous in the US today, however, are the well-educated, largely urban Indians who began to arrive in large numbers after 1965; the pace of Indian immigration increased still more rapidly in the 1970s. Born to middle-class Indian families, college-educated and ﬂuent in English, these post-1965 immigrants arrived in response to new US immigration laws which simultaneously opened the US to migration from the former third world and gave precedence to migrants with advanced education, professional training or large amounts of capital to invest. Indian scientists, engineers, medical personnel, ﬁnanciers, entrepreneurs and a host of other professionals began to arrive, recruited to ﬁll perceived labour shortages in the ranks of American science and medicine.

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Both urban and suburban Until recently these newer immigrants have been geographically concentrated in the areas of the US which offer the widest variety of jobs, in industry, the professions, the service sector and small business. This means that California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Texas and Florida, with dense populations and mixed economies, have attracted particularly large numbers of Indians; these states’ urban centres are the preferred locales for the newly arrived. Primarily, of course, these are areas which offer the widest selection of work in technology industries, the professions, the health industry and in services. The sheer number and variety of available jobs eases the initial job search among immigrants and makes the subsidiary employment of spouses or other relatives more convenient. In addition, cities, particularly older cities, offer Indians a wide range of entrepreneurial opportunities; Indians have taken over once-fading downtown areas in a number of American cities and revitalized them as enclaves of Indian shopping, services and cultural consumption. There are also other, less tangible advantages to living in such urban areas: they usually offer accessible, low-cost public education for adults, and, with their long histories of in-migration, they are frequently more culturally and racially tolerant of newcomers than small towns or suburbs. However, in the past decade, Indians, along with other new immigrants, have been increasingly moving out of central cities to the suburbs, sometimes directly upon arrival in the US (Edmondson 2000; Chen 1999). In many cases immigrants choose the suburbs for the quality of housing and schools that they can provide, as well as the amenities such as green spaces, clean streets and parking, which the middle class in India has come to expect. Additionally, many high-tech industries have themselves relocated to suburbs. Areas such as small-town northern New England, which had once never seen Indians unless they were local college students, now have growing Indian immigrant populations, many engaged in the IT business. The only drawback to such a shift in population patterns is the increase in racial antagonism that seems to occur when Indians or other upwardly mobile, non-white immigrants begin to appear in large numbers in formerly homogeneous, all-white suburbs or rural areas whose inhabitants thought they had permanently escaped the Other. The construction of temples, as Indians begin to assert their permanent presence in such areas, and to lay claim to social space, often touches off the most vehement protests. At present, ﬁrst-generation Indian immigrants are not well-equipped to combat the varied forms of American racism, mired as they are in a vision of themselves as either white or, in Kibria’s term, ‘ambiguous nonwhites’ (1998: 71). For Indian migrants who began arriving after 1965, the possibilities of professional careers open to anyone willing to work hard in America were extremely attractive, despite a haunting nostalgia for India and its culture,

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perceived as richer, more complex and more emotionally satisfying than anything America has to offer. When explaining their decisions to leave India, most of the new arrivals of the 1965–80 period speciﬁcally contrast the better employment conditions and more open work culture of the US with those of India. By the mid-1980s, with professional preference immigrant visas harder to get, though by no means unavailable, youthful members of India’s professional classes continued to migrate, often seeking student visas which they hoped to translate into permanent residence. These younger and more recent migrants openly cited money, increased earning power and access to consumer goods as their motivations for leaving India. If plentiful, well-paid jobs, more rewarding careers and a higher standard of living in the US exert a pull on these migrants, they also have been ‘pushed’ out of India by a range of ongoing social and economic changes occurring there from the 1970s onward. While a growing Westernized, urban middle class is frustrated by lack of economic opportunities in India, it is also being transformed by the increased involvement of India with a world economy. Western-style media and advertising, a new consumer culture, and the increasing presence of multinational ﬁrms in India all serve to encouraged the yearning for the West among those who, thanks to India’s colonial legacy, already speak English and have a Western-style education. Signiﬁcantly, it is the most highly developed and industrialized regions of India, such as Maharashtra and Gujarat, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu which have contributed the largest numbers of migrants to the US. Areas of India which have been involved in transnational labour and commercial migration for a long time, such as the Punjab, pre-partition Sindh and Kerala, also contribute large numbers of migrants. Today a great many Indian young people in the middle-class families of urban India begin to strategize in their early teens, manoeuvring to acquire the kinds of training which will permit them to emigrate successfully and mobilizing the networks connecting them to previous immigrants wherever possible.8 Virtually every urban, middle-class family now has some members living permanently abroad. Certain kin networks have been wholly relocated to Europe, Australia or the US. Those settled in the US turn to the family reuniﬁcation clauses of US immigration law to sponsor the subsequent migration of spouses, children, parents and siblings. The continued ﬂow of migration is suggested by the fact that between 55 and 70 per cent of those listing themselves as ‘Indians of Asian origin’ in the 1990 US Census were born in India (see Bureau of the Census 1993: table 105, versus ﬁgures offered by Gall and Gall 1993: 572). Immigrants who, two decades ago, still spoke as though they would eventually return to India, no longer do so. Despite a lingering ‘myth of return’, most now acknowledge that they live in the US permanently and that their children are growing up as Americans, albeit ‘hyphenated Americans’, that is, IndianAmericans or South Asian Americans. More importantly, an increasingly

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prevalent transnational life-style offers some ﬁrst- and even secondgeneration Indian immigrants the chance to ‘have it all’ – American wealth and American careers combined with ongoing involvement in Indian society and culture. (Conversely, as the size and cultural vitality of the Indian immigrant population abroad is publicized in India, many young Indians reason that they can ‘have it all’ by migrating, retaining as much of Indian culture as they wish while also enjoying air conditioning, a new car and a spacious suburban house.) Whether any transmigrants can fully and successfully operate in two cultures over extended periods of time remains an open question, as does the problem of how or whether transnationalism persists among second-generation Indian migrants.

Creation of ethnic identity and community Since the mid-1960s, ofﬁcial US ideology has moved from earlier models of immigrant assimilation to a model of cultural pluralism, although the longstanding black/white racial polarization of American culture also remains in force as an unofﬁcial set of folk categories. Today ethnic groups, including new immigrants, are ofﬁcially encouraged to retain, and even to recreate, their separate ethnic identities as part of their celebration of ‘Americanness’. Within this cultural climate Indians have been quick to create customs and institutions emphasizing the most picturesque and nationalist aspects of their Indian heritage. Some of this ethnic identity is actually created through consumption (Khandelwal 1995; Lessinger 1995). Indian commercial enclaves have emerged wherever there are sufﬁciently large residential concentrations of Indians, and at the core of these ethnic enclaves are shops selling items and services which are in demand among Indian consumers and serve a symbolic function of signalling ethnicity: food, jewellery, clothing, videos and music recordings, religious paraphernalia, books and newspapers, plus electronic goods which are simultaneously prestige items and gifts for relatives in India. Beyond the realm of consumption there exists an entire network of ethnic organizations – religious, cultural, professional and political – which keep Indian immigrants simultaneously connected to each other and to India. It is these organizations which deﬁne the shape and scope of what Indians in the US refer to simply as ‘the community’, the population of fellow immigrants understood in distinction to the host society, ‘the Americans’.9 Hindu temples (Fenton 1988; Waghorne 1999), mosques, gurudwaras, and Indian Christian churches are prominent in areas of Indian settlement, and play important roles as promoters of Indian culture, community centres and informal social service agencies. All of these institutions are particularly concerned with helping immigrants transmit orthodox religious practices and beliefs to the second generation – something both priests and lay people ﬁnd difﬁcult amidst a dominant Christian/secular

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culture. Religious leaders are constantly searching for ways to make Indian religious messages accessible to the American-born young (Lessinger 1995), since religion is central to the immigrant project of cultural preservation and transmission. Indian television and radio programmes broadcast news and entertainment, supplementing the Indian ﬁlms available for rent on video in most Indian shops. Two major newspapers, India West and India Abroad, celebrate the accomplishments of the Indian community and provide extensive coverage of events and trends in India. Smaller papers, published in local Indian languages such as Tamil, Urdu or Bengali, are also available, as are a series of magazines. The weekly newspapers are an important vehicle for marriage advertisements. The matrimonial section at the end of India Abroad clearly reaches an international audience, drawing hopeful advertisements from families living in India, Canada, Britain and occasionally other parts of Europe, as well as from across the US. The media are, in addition, particularly committed to creating an image of Indian immigrants as a model minority in the US, exceptionally successful and well-adjusted. India Abroad also has periodic special issues striving to create a similar image of success around Indians in other parts of the diaspora by featuring the accomplishments of Indians in Britain, Africa or Australia. This media, therefore, is a powerful force in fostering a sense of a ‘diasporic’ identity for those who want it. Because Indians in the US are still preponderantly ﬁrst-generation, there are still large numbers of organizations dedicated to the interests of people from particular areas of India: the Tamil Sangam, the Bengali Association, the Gujarati Society. Some of these are largely cultural, organizing concerts, plays or poetry readings in local languages. Others function to maintain links with native areas in India, or to raise money for charitable causes ‘at home’. There is also, throughout the US, an extensive network of less formal organizations, networks of friends from the same areas of India, who meet regularly in each other’s homes for worship, fellowship, and a chance to introduce their children to suitable potential mates (Kurien 1999). Many of these informal networks provide important support functions for their members, helping those suffering personal tragedies, job losses or visa difﬁculties as well as the lesser crises associated with family visits or the raising of teenagers. Two national organizations, the Federation of Indian Associations in America (FIAA) and the Association of Indians in America (AIA), attempt to represent Indians’ political interests. The AIA, for instance, participated during the late 1970s in an effort to get Asian Indians listed as a separate census category; from 1980 onward it has been possible to ﬁnd separate US Census statistics about those who consider themselves ‘Asians of Indian origin’. The AIA and FIAA have also been instrumental in many parts of the US in organizing local festivals or parades which advertise Indians as a visible and important ethnic group within a multicultural local setting. In

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New York City, which has a venerable tradition of ethnic parades and festivals, the FIAA organizes an annual India Day parade down Madison Avenue each August, while the AIA organizes a Diwali celebration within view of the harbour in lower Manhattan. Both events are carefully constructed representations of an idealized Indian community,10 both for the beneﬁt of fellow Indians and for ‘the Americans’ – so much so that ‘controversial’ activist organizations such as the feminist South Asian women’s group Sakhi, or the lesbian-gay group SALGA (South Asian Lesbian and Gay Alliance), have in the past been banned from a public presence at such events. What is remarkable about all of these organizations and events – tailored to the American scene and to the creation of Indian immigrant identity abroad – is the extent to which they are also interwoven with Indian immigrant transnationalism, suggesting the extent to which at least the ﬁrst generation continues to inhabit a social universe stretching to encompass parts of India as well as the US. The commercial enclaves faithfully mirror Indian taste, showing off the latest fashions in clothing and jewellery, making the newest movies available on video within weeks of their release in India. Bollywood stars, classical musicians, bhangra groups, Indian rappers and Indian religious ﬁgures regularly tour the US in the summer months, sponsored by religious, cultural or regional associations or commercial backers. So do Indian political ﬁgures. Everyone, from heroic generals to the chief ministers of Indian states, wooing NRI investments, to Hindutva ideologues seeking to raise support and funds from conservative US Indians, eventually makes an appearance somewhere in the US, travelling a circuit delineated by the locations of Indian immigrant organizations and networks.

The construction of NRIs Those Indians who came to the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were cut off from ongoing contact with India, both by restrictive immigration laws (which made visits to India or the further migration of relatives impossible after 1924) and by their own relative poverty. The post-1965 immigrants, however, always saw themselves as transnationals, in common with a great many other new immigrant groups in the US. Indeed it has been relatively easy for Indian-Americans to remain in close contact with India, since they are generally afﬂuent enough to afford the long-distance telephone calls, the video recorders and camcorders (for watching or producing the videos which let immigrants share life-crisis events with distant relatives and friends), the frequent plane trips back to India, and the remittances which allow relatives in India to share these advantages too.11 The cultural motivations which have impelled Indian immigrants to remain so involved with India are complex. Certainly strong family loyalties

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play their role, so that immigrants remain committed to the well-being of extended family members who remain in India. Because the US is a land of fabled wealth and ease, family members in India have economic as well as sentimental motives for remaining close to migrant kin. For those who migrated in the 1960s and 1970s in particular, pride in Indian culture and cultural nationalism have contributed to the ambivalence these migrants felt about American society and their attachment to it. The myth of return lingered for many years as immigrants promised themselves that their stays abroad were only temporary; this stance fed into many Indian-Americans’ transnational orientation since everybody was poised to go back to India ‘next year’. US society itself also contributes to this transnational orientation, in two ways. On the one hand, an American culture which sees itself as a collection of distinct ethnic groups (and covertly encourages ethnic competition) must inevitably place a certain pressure on immigrant groups to retain ethnicity and to validate their authenticity (Radhakrishnan 1996). What better way to certify one’s cultural authenticity than by constant contact with India and things Indian? On the other hand, a racially polarized American society has not offered brown-skinned Indian immigrants an unqualiﬁed welcome. Although Indians have not been as widely victimized as African-Americans or as other new immigrants like the Vietnamese, they have encountered both nativism and racism and have suffered their share of harassment, discrimination and attack (Lessinger 1995, 2000). These clashes may well be increasing, as the Indian immigrant population grows, becomes more culturally assertive and moves into formerly all-white suburbs (Singh 1996), where hostility may be muted but persistent. At work, many IndianAmerican professionals believe that they encounter a ‘glass ceiling’ at some point in their careers, limiting further promotion in American management structures. School children and college students encounter blunt expressions of racism as classmates try to decide whether Indian students are black or white, then blame them for being neither. In these situations of racial unease although not overt exclusion, transnationalism offers a particular lure, providing immigrants with the alternate social arena of India, where neither their culture nor their skin colour is devalued. On the contrary, their status is enhanced by the fact of migration and the relative luxury their American salaries can command in the Indian context. Although ordinary citizens in India often refer to all overseas Indians as NRIs, talk about the summer months, when immigrants return for visits and holidays, as the ‘NRI season’, and identify a certain kind of ostentatious, Westernized consumption as ‘NRI style’, the term NRI is actually a recent creation of the Indian government, dating from the late 1970s. Inspired by China’s success in luring back immigrant capital and searching for quick ways to modernize its own economy in the early phases of the country’s economic liberalization, the Indian government developed

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the legal category of the Non-Resident Indian. This is somebody of Indian ancestry, now living outside India, who is nevertheless accorded a privileged status when investing in the Indian economy. In theory any member of the Indian diaspora could qualify for these privileges. In practice, the new policy has been aimed at the wealthiest and best-connected immigrants in the US and Europe, who might most realistically be expected to take up these offers. NRI investors were offered a status intermediate between that of Indian citizen insiders and foreign investor outsiders – outsiders who were held more ﬁrmly at arm’s length in the 1970s and 1980s than at present. NRIs, it was fondly believed, would bring their technical know-how, capital and managerial skills ‘home’ to start industries, create jobs and circulate wealth. There was discussion of technology and skills transfers in the process. Later, the scheme was extended to permit NRIs to invest dollars, pounds sterling, yen or Deutschmark in Indian bank accounts, at highly favourable rates of interest – a plan designed to boost India’s foreign exchange reserves at a time when they were perilously low (Lessinger 1992a, 1992b). The rhetoric by which the Indian government presented these plans and wooed NRIs to invest was ﬁlled with appeals to nationalism, to ideals of national development (initial discussions of NRI investment linked it to technology transfer), to primordial sentiments of Indianness and belonging, and to immigrants’ residual guilt at having left poverty and underdevelopment behind them when they migrated. Many of the appeals suggested that such investment offered NRIs a way to return to India, or paved the way for retirement there. The chief ministers of various Indian states, who toured the US bidding for NRI investment in their regions, invoked regional and linguistic loyalties in their pleas that NRIs come ‘home’ to help develop the regions of their birth. The other kind of emotional plea invoked in this campaign was family loyalty and the concern for relatives, particularly ageing parents, left behind. Promoters of American-style hospitals and medical centres in India, for instance, managed to imply that these centres would provide up-to-date medical care for elderly parents, a place for Indian-American doctors to practice or teach, and perhaps even medical support should the NRI decide to retire in India. Some NRI investors did establish manufacturing plants in India, although fewer than the government hoped. Others built housing, hospitals or medical centres – structures whose glittering, international-style facades seem to have become unfortunate models for much of India’s new urban architecture. None of these investments were numerous or large enough to have had a lasting impact on the Indian economy. Numbers of other ventures failed eventually, as NRI entrepreneurs either gave up the struggle with Indian bureaucracy or found the effort of managing a businesses by proxy too taxing. Both business investors and those who had simply banked their savings in India complained bitterly about restrictions on taking their proﬁts out of the country, although the Indian government made endless

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promises to speed, ease and facilitate the process. By the 1990s many potential NRI investors were somewhat disillusioned, while Indian ofﬁcials blamed the numerous failures on the inexperience of over-eager but illprepared ﬁrst-time industrialists. And, by the end of the 1990s, India was again welcoming investments from a number of Western multinational corporations, making the relatively small-scale NRI investments less necessary. The creation of the NRI investor category seems to have had several lasting social effects, however. One has been to offer certain science and technology entrepreneurs within the Indian immigrant population another avenue for earning and success. This serves to enhance the class differences which already exist within the immigrant community in the US. More importantly, the ofﬁcial link between NRIs and the Indian government has strengthened and institutionalized the transnational orientation of the Indian immigrant leadership in the US. Today Indian immigrant leaders, particularly businessmen/professionals, routinely organize symposia and meetings in the US, Europe and sometimes in India itself, to lay out not only economic but also political policy recommendations for India. Organizers and speakers are conﬁdent that their mix of technocratic and capitalist expertise can solve India’s problems if only the politicians would heed them. The class bias in favour of India’s Westernized middle classes (and in favour of a transnational migrant elite) inherent in such recommendations is overwhelming. At such gatherings it is left to a handful of old-fashioned Gandhians and social activists among the immigrants to remind the bored audience that India has problems which go beyond inefﬁcient banking, inadequate airline service or the shortage of private telephones: malnutrition, illiteracy, the absence of potable water or medical care remain daily facts for much of the population. It is the same coterie of Indian professionals/entrepreneurs who are pressing the Indian government to grant NRIs dual citizenship, voting rights and other political representation – a cabinet post has been mentioned – in India. So far successive governments have sidestepped and evaded this demand, so threatening to the Indian political establishment regardless of its party afﬁliation. It is not simply that politicians fear the power and inﬂuence of wealthy outsiders, but that a national bureaucratic elite sees that its interests are very different from those of a transnational technocratic elite. Another impact of Indian government focus on NRIs has been to emphasize class contradictions within India itself. Over the last thirty-ﬁve years Indian transnational immigrants to the West have had a role in altering the consumer tastes and expectations of India’s middle class. Of course, NRIs are not single-handedly responsible for the massive changes in living standards and outlook of India’s urban bourgeoisie; today’s advertising, CNN, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Indian tourism to Malaysia and Hong Kong can also be blamed. An expansion in modern industries and services in India has produced the income to make such consumption

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possible. However, NRIs are often a handy scapegoat for the dislocations caused by vast cultural changes and the wave of Westernization overtaking urban India. The NRIs, often accused of having lost their own culture through migration and of being Not Really Indian, are also accused of causing India to lose her culture. With more accuracy, Indian progressives have noted the ways in which the Indian government has subsidized NRI and other middle-class entrepreneurial ventures at the expense of basic services for its own citizens. For instance, a series of elabourate, Americanstyle, for-proﬁt medical centres undertaken in South India by NRI investors drew particular ire, since local governments provided free building land, new roads, electricity lines and water connections for private hospitals which will be wholly beyond the reach of most Indians. Meanwhile public health centres and hospitals in the area suffer dilapidation and shortages of basic supplies. Like the issue of fund-raising for the Indian Institutes of Technology, with which this chapter began, the criticism of NRIs is simply part of a larger debate about the kinds of economic development India should undertake, who should control it and who should proﬁt from it.

Conclusion The chapter has laid out, in brief form, the structure and internal class cleavages within the Indian new immigrant population in the United States. A sector of this population has – unlike most new immigrants – become extremely successful and prosperous within the ﬁrst generation of arrival. These professionals, heavily concentrated in science, medicine and business, form the group which dominates the discourse of community and of identity among Indian-Americans. With the growth of the information technology industry, in which Indians and other Asians are heavily represented, the ﬁgure of the scientist/entrepreneur has emerged on the American scene, somebody who can use the latest management techniques to make science turn a proﬁt. The modest lives of numerous lower-middleclass and working-class Indian immigrants, engaged in more traditional wage work or petty entrepreneurship, is frequently overlooked. Although the economic integration of Indian immigrants has been generally successful, cultural integration has perhaps been less smooth than the immigrant leadership implies. American nativism and racism have an impact on Indian immigrants, and the ethnic leadership has few ideological tools to counteract or repudiate it. While racism has not generally proved a barrier to Indian immigrant achievement, it has created a sense of unease and cultural discomfort, even among those who have been most successful. This unease may encourage a transnational outlook by constantly reminding people that ‘home’ is elsewhere and should not be abandoned. Within this scenario, transnationalism, and the ofﬁcially sponsored form of it offered to NRI investors, has provided economic incentives for some

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Indian immigrants in the US to develop deeper involvement in India. More importantly, the scheme has both intensiﬁed and legitimated virtually all Indian immigrants’ ongoing engagement with India, as well as India’s own outreach to its diaspora. Although transnationalism is sometimes visualized as an unhindered, multidirectional ﬂow of inﬂuences, ideas and people, there are clearly resistances to these ﬂows. Indian scientists’ dismay at NRI offers to restructure, as well as restore, the IITs is one of these. The conﬂict is not simply between proﬁt-oriented, Americanized IIT alumni and an old-fashioned, nationalistic Indian scientiﬁc establishment. Instead the dispute pits the moral outlook of a global, technocratic elite, whether American, European, Japanese or Indian, against an older vision of science and education as part of national economic development. Many American or European academics are ﬁghting similar battles to keep corporate science from engulﬁng universities and pre-empting national priorities. At issue is the kind of economic development India is going to pursue in the face of globalization and the demands of India’s educated, Westernized middle class. Should India try to protect the class interests of ordinary Indians for whom the IITs have been an educational boon, or will it be better served by throwing itself into the arms of a global information technology industry? To embrace the latter role is probably to accept second-class status as supplier of cheap intellectual labour to more advanced capitalist countries. The other linked issue is the kinds of political representation Indian immigrants should have in India. For all the rhetoric of diasporic unity and cultural oneness, wealthy NRI entrepreneurs are still held at arm’s length within the Indian political establishment – probably for good reason. The most enthusiastically transnational individuals no longer share the daily lives of those they left behind. Do the immigrants, however sincere and concerned, have the right to determine the direction of that life, via the money they contribute, while living aboard? Many in India say no, in effect asserting that at some level it is impossible to live in two societies, that local cultures based on face-to-face interaction take priority.

Notes 1 Privatization is a solution much favoured, both by Western-oriented professionals and by entrepreneurs in India. Both groups are exasperated with the Indian government and despairing about the ability of the state to facilitate the country’s social and economic modernization. Privatization also appeals to a great many NRIs steeped in the American economic model, who see privatization as the universal solution to ‘socialist’ India’s problems. For both groups, political conservatism, born of their class positions, makes such a stance attractive. In addition many have the technocrat’s simplistic, quick-ﬁx approach to complex social problems. 2 India Abroad, published in New York City, is one of two major Indian immigrant news weeklies in the US. The other, India West, is published on the West Coast.

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3 Bidwai (2000) argues that the Indian computer/information technology business is still relatively small and unsophisticated compared to that in the US. The two are not direct competitors. However, the American industry is perfectly capable of growing through the cannibalization of the Indian industry. Already considerable numbers of Indian software engineers have been imported to the US to work in the American computer industry on temporary work visas. They are paid tiny salaries compared to their American counterparts. With the sudden downturn in the American economy in 2001, led by the collapse of large numbers of dot.com ﬁrms, large numbers of these temporary workers have been laid off and obliged to return to India. 4 The 1990 US Census showed that 815,447 people who called themselves Asians of Indian descent lived in the United States. Since this is a self-reported category, the ﬁgure may well include large numbers of Indo-Caribbeans and even some Pakistanis or Bangladeshis. Since the 2000 Census ﬁgures have not yet been fully tabulated, there are no ﬁgures to update this 1990 ﬁgure, but the Immigration and Naturalization Service reports another 311,000 people entered the US from India between 1991 and 1998. Census ofﬁcials estimate that the entire Asian American population has been growing at approximately 4.5 per cent a year (Bureau of the Census 1995: 1). 5 Some of the high household incomes for Indian immigrants are due to the slightly greater tendency of Indian-American households to contain two or even three wage-earners than American-born households. 6 The 2000 Census may help clarify whether the proportion of less prosperous and successful Indian immigrants is increasing, as members of the community themselves insist. What will remain to be clariﬁed is whether these people come from signiﬁcantly different class backgrounds in India than the successful and prosperous. Obviously the Indian immigrant elite has a certain stake in distancing itself from the ‘failures’ in its midst. 7 In an unforgettable phrase, a well-to-do Indian immigrant community leader from Texas reproached the researcher for her focus on Indian newsstand workers: ‘Don’t bother about them. They’re just our stupider younger brothers and cousins.’ 8 As the US economy contracted in the late 1980s, (with a resulting resurgence of American nativism and prejudice against hiring foreigners), it became harder for those with foreign qualiﬁcations to get good jobs in the US. In response, many would-be migrants changed their strategy slightly. Instead of completing college and graduate training in India, then seeking visas as professionals, many young people now come to America as students, to take their graduate or even undergraduate degrees in American universities. They reason that American educational qualiﬁcations (and the kinds of acculturation experience offered by American colleges) will make it easier to ﬁnd jobs in the US, and that with employer sponsorship they can then obtain immigrant status (a ‘green card’) more quickly. 9 The Indian immigrant population does not function as a true community because of its size, diversity and internal class divisions. However, the image of community is an interesting one, and presumably further heightens the implied cultural/ moral contrast between Indians and non-Indians in the US. Signiﬁcantly, American society is commonly regarded as cold, soulless and anomic compared to that of India or of Indian-America. 10 The ever-perceptive Vijay Prashad comments that such events ‘encourage a kind of cultural literacy among the community members as well as helping create fellowship through these nationalist leisure activities’ (2000: 115–16). 11 Indeed, even working-class Indian immigrants in New York may invest in long-

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distance calls and a video recorder long before they acquire furniture. I have visited apartments in which the only possessions are cooking pots, clothing, blankets and pillows for sleeping on the ﬂoor, plus a telephone, television and video recorder. One such individual confessed that the bills he found most burdensome were his long-distance phone bills.

References and further reading Basch, L., N. Glick-Schiller and C. Szanton-Blanc (1994) Nations Unbound, Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States, Langhorne, Penn.: Gordon and Breach. Bidwai, P. (2000) ‘Limits of the information “revolution” ’, Frontline, 18 February, 110–1. Bouvier, L. and D. Simcox (1994) Foreign Born Professionals in the United States, Washington, D.C.: Center for Immigration Studies. Bureau of the Census (1993) 1990 Census of Population, Social and Economic Characteristics, 1990 CP2–1, Washington, D.C.: Bureau of the Census. —– (1995) The Nation’s Asian and Paciﬁc Islander Population–1994, Washington, D.C.: US Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration. Chen, D. (1999) ‘Asian American Middle Class Alters a Rural Enclave’, New York Times, 27 December: A1, B9. Dugger, C. (1999) ‘India’s High-Tech, and Sheepish, Capitalism’, New York Times, 16 December: A1, A2. —– (2000) ‘Return Passage to India: Emigres Pay Back’, New York Times, 29 February: A1, A11. Dutt, E. (2000) ‘Payback Time, Early IIT immigrants to US lead drive to raise funds to keep ‘brain factories’ running smoothly’, India Abroad, 21 January: 24. Edmondson, B. (2000) ‘Immigration Nation, the New Suburbanites’, Preservation, January /February: 1–49. Fenton, J. (1988) Transplanting Religious Traditions: Asian Indians in America, New York: Praeger. Fisher, M. (1980) The Indians of New York City, New Delhi: Heritage. Gall, S. and T. Gall (eds) (1993) Statistical Record of Asian Americans, Detroit: Gale Research Inc. Gibson, M. (1988) Accommodation Without Assimilation: Sikh Immigrants in an American High School, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jensen, J. (1988) Passage From India: Asian Indian Immigrants in North America, New Haven: Yale University Press. Helweg, A. and U. Helweg (1990) An Immigrant Success Story: East Indians in America, Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press. Holson, L. (2000) ‘A Capitalist Venturing in the World of Computers and Religion’, New York Times, 3 January: C1. Khandelwal, M. (1995) ‘Indian Immigrants in Queens, New York City: Patterns of Spatial Concentration and Distribution 1965–1990’, in Peter van der Veer (ed.), Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kibria, N. (1998) ‘Not Asian, White, or Black: Reﬂections on South Asian American Racial Identity’, in L. Dhingra Shankar and R. Srikanth (eds), A Part, Yet Apart, South Asians in Asian America, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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Kurien, P. (1999) ‘Gendered Ethnicity: Creating a Hindu Indian Identity in the United States’, American Behavioral Scientist, 42: 648–70. La Brack, B. (1988) The Sikhs of Northern California, 1904–1975: A Socio-Historical Study, New York: AMS Press. Leonard, K. (1992) Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. —– (1997) The South Asian Americans, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Lessinger, J. (1992a) ‘Investing or Going Home? A Transnational Strategy Among Indian Immigrants in the United States’, in N. Schiller, L. Basch and C. BlancSzanton (eds) Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration, Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered, New York: New York Academy of Sciences. —– (1992b) ‘Non-Resident Indian Investment and India’s Drive for Industrial Modernization’, in F. Rothstein and M. Blim (eds), Anthropology and the Global Factory, Studies of the New Industrialization in the Late Twentieth Century, New York: Bergin and Garvey. —– (1992c) ‘Asian Indians in New York: Dreams and Despair in the Newsstand Business’, The New Asia 7(2). —– (1995) From the Ganges to the Hudson: Indian Immigrants in New York City, Boston: Allyn and Bacon. —– (1999) ‘Class, Race and Success: Indian-Americans Confront the American Dream’, in C. Petievich (ed.), The Expanding Landscape, South Asians in the Diaspora, New Delhi: Manohar. —– (2000) ‘Class and Race: Indian Immigrant Identity in the New York City Economy’, in H. Cordero-Guzman and R. Smith (eds), Migration, Transnationalism and the Political Economy of New York, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Padmanabhan, A. (2000) ‘IITs belong to the nation, they cannot be privatized’, India Abroad, 21 January: 22. Prashad, V. (2000) The Karma of Brown Folk, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Radhakrishnan, R. (1996) Diasporic Mediations: Between Home and Location, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rekhi, K. (2000) ‘The country needs at least 20 more IITs’, India Abroad, 21 January: 24. Saran, P. (1985) The Asian Indian Experience in the United States, New Delhi: Vikas. Singh, A. (1996) ‘African Americans and the New Immigrants’ in D. Bahri and M. Vasudeva (eds), Between the Lines, South Asians and Postcoloniality, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Waghorne, J. (1999) ‘Hindu Gods in an American landscape: the Sri Siva-Vishnu Temple in Suburban Washington, D.C’, in C. Petievich (ed.), The Expanding Landscape, South Asians and the Diaspora, Delhi: Manohar.

Chapter Title

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Imagining Indian diasporas in Canada An epic without a text? Harjot Oberoi

The true picture of the past ﬂits by. The past can be seized only as an image which ﬂashes up at this instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again . . . the state of emergency in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. (Benjamin 1973) No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively Black, or Western, or Oriental. (Said 1993)

In the late 1980s, the Social Science Research Council in New York commissioned the well-known Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh to write a piece on the cultural connections between India and its diasporic populations. Given that Ghosh himself occupies a privileged place within the diaspora and the fact that he was earlier trained as a social anthropologist at Oxford, the Council made a ﬁne choice. Ghosh came up with a rather dramatic hypothesis that although we take it for granted that there is, and should be, an abiding relationship between India and its migrants, this relationship was historically both peculiar and anomalous (Ghosh 1989). He backed up this unusual proposition by arguing that the links between India and its modern diaspora were not those of language, politics, religion or economics. To begin with the linguistic register, Ghosh argues that Indian migrants, unlike British or French or Chinese overseas, readily conceded to the languages of the areas they called home. Thus in Mauritius, an island where Indian migrants have a preponderance over other communities, the dominant language is not Hindi but a French creole. Similarly, in Trinidad

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and Guyana Indians speak a creole mixed with European and native languages rather than their indigenous Bhojpuri. Unlike other civilizations India did not export a language with its outgoing groups. Equally, India’s dispersed populations have not appropriated anything from the institutional or political framework of the subcontinent. This is strikingly dissimilar from the Arabs, Turks or Anglo-Saxons, who heavily borrowed from the institutional and political paradigms of their respective mother countries. Having discredited the idea of linguistic or political afﬁliations, Ghosh goes on to dismantle any notions of systematic connections in the religious or economic spheres. Both Hinduism and Indian Islam, he contends, are marked by systematic diversity and as such did not possess either the uniformity of dogma or ritual practices to press their claims on those who left. He cites the example of how Hindus from India barely recognize the religious practices of Hindus in the West Indies. And ﬁnally, he delivers a lasting blow by downplaying the possibility of any signiﬁcant economic linkages between India and its diaspora. Instead of language, religion, politics and economics, Ghosh states that what connected India and its diaspora was largely the domain of imagination, what he warmly labels as an ‘epic relationship’. But even in this limited bracketing there was a massive hiatus. Enigmatically, this ‘epic relationship’ is not marked by any canonical text. And if such a metatext were ever proposed or written it would be a ‘shabby, bedraggled, melancholy kind of epic’ (ibid.: 76). And as such, Ghosh celebrates the fact that there exists an imaginary ‘epic relationship’ without a uniﬁed text. While the propositions put forward by Ghosh certainly make for intriguing reading, any one who follows the cartography of the South Asian diasporas knows that most of Ghosh’s assertions, though not all, are poorly formulated. One could cite scores of empirical examples and numerous case studies to question what Ghosh has proposed. For instance, to go back to the linguistic register, we know that Indians have not drowned in the ocean of heteroglossia. The province of British Columbia on the west coast of Canada has experienced a long chain of Indian migration, primarily from the Punjab region, that extends over a hundred years. Although it is true that initially when Indian numbers were very small in the region much of the public discourse took place in English, as the demographics thickened the usage and visibility of Punjabi increased signiﬁcantly. Members of the Punjabi migrant community set about publishing newspapers, journals, novels, literary anthologies, and staging plays in the vernacular. A dramatic growth in Punjabi print culture laid the foundations for an interest in livebroadcasting, both over radio and television. In the 1980s a community drive led to the establishment of a chair in Punjabi language and literature at the University of British Columbia. This was followed by the provincial education ministry including instruction in Punjabi as part of the school curriculum from grade 1 to 12. Without unduly exaggerating the importance of these materials, for we do not have a public culture in British

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Columbia informed by a minority language, what needs to be underscored is that one can cite solid examples of Indian diasporic communities taking the language question seriously and doing something about it. What about political articulations then, the second of Ghosh’s criteria to arrive at the peculiarities of Indian migrant communities? As a social scientist he is well aware that it would be naïve to seek imprints like that of medieval Indian expansion, when the Tamils took Indian forms of kingship to South-East Asia. In the absence of such spectacular linkages Ghosh perhaps too prematurely concludes that ‘there are no signiﬁcant political or strategic considerations in the links between India and her diaspora’ (ibid.: 75). If one were to view communal consciousness, quintessentially as an Indian contribution to modern political vocabulary, then it is not too difﬁcult to document how this consciousness has come to inﬂuence heavily the politics of those who left the motherland. Otherwise on what political grid would one post such collectivities as the Babbar Akalis, the Kashmir Liberation Force, and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad? These atavistic bodies are ﬁrmly tied to the politics of the subcontinent. The economic sphere is also far more complex than Ghosh would allow for. Without venturing into the data on remittances and capital inﬂows from the newly minted fortunes of Indian engineers in California, allow me to cite a much more humble example. In the early 1900s it was Punjabi farmers who introduced rice farming to the United States. Today rice cultivation is big business in the agricultural valleys of California. And ﬁnally in the domain of religion it is now commonplace to suggest that both popular religiosity and ofﬁcial theologies are constantly replicated and renewed in the diaspora. Despite my misgivings about Ghosh’s intervention, I think as a creative writer he is on to something crucial when he proposes in passing that the massive migration from India has never been emplotted in a literary text of epic proportions (Ghosh 1989). In what follows I would like to reﬂect further on this lacuna, particularly in the context of Canada. While some of the ﬁnest writers writing in English language today in metropolitan centres like New York, London and Toronto are of Indian origin, this fact has not translated into a body of literature that ties South Asians into what Benedict Anderson made famous as ‘imagined communities’. These ‘imagined communities’ are a result of commodiﬁed print culture and literary production, particularly the novel. Lisa Lowe, who has written extensively on Asian American communities, is rather apt when she observes: In both England and the United States, the novel as a form of print culture has constituted a privileged site for the uniﬁcation of the citizen with the imagined community of the nation, while the national literary canon functioned to unify aesthetic culture as a domain in which material differences and localities were resolved and reconciled. The bildungsroman emerged as the primary form for narrating the develop-

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With the emergence of novel as a textual institution in the ‘West’ it became possible to spin foundational cultural ﬁctions surrounding nationalism, gender privileges, class distinctions, the public and the private, and imperial mission. The entire project of modernity, particularly its normative doctrine of individualism and secularism, had to be radically inscribed on the minds and bodies of subjects who were often unwilling to let go of allegiances to older orthodoxies. The writings of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Goethe, while providing entertainment to an ever increasing reading public, helped resolve the cultural contradictions resulting from new forms of activity and economic re-organization. So the central question of my chapter is: what sort of literary institution can be said to perform the same role for the transnational communities of the diaspora? How are the ruptures, traumas and contradictions of migrant communities resolved? If the nation, as Homi Bhaba would have it, is narrated by the novel, what sort of text narrates the diaspora? My initial answer to these questions is inﬂuenced by the writings of Walter Benjamin, perhaps the greatest cultural theorist of the twentieth century. The textual archives of Indian migrant communities are then to be found in ﬂashes of memory that are often explicated in moments of danger (Benjamin 1973). These ﬂashes of memory are not contained in any single genre and can take multiple forms: anecdotes, rumour, gossip, poetry, ﬁction, drama, memoirs, and literary fragments. Further, I argue that there is an intertextuality across these forms whereby the facts of ﬁction can equally be rendered as facts of history. As such it will be a grave error to look for these ﬂashes of memory in the institutional arena of high culture alone or within disciplinary boundaries. The most famous Indian writer living in Canada today is Rohinton Mistry. Born to a Zoroastrian family in 1952, Rohinton went to school and college in Bombay. Soon after ﬁnishing his B.Sc. in 1974, Rohinton emigrated to Canada and made the city of Toronto his home. While working in a bank, he once again enrolled for post-secondary education, and this time picked up a degree in liberal arts from the University of Toronto (1984). It was during this time that he started writing short stories. His ﬁrst story, ‘Auspicious Occasion’, was set in Bombay and revolved around the quotidian life of the city’s Parsi community. These two themes, the decaying environment of a post-colonial metropolis and the vicissitudes of Parsi life, became the obsessions of Rohinton’s literary oeuvre. His ﬁrst collection of short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag, was published by Penguin in 1987. This set of eleven short stories was followed by an ambitious novel, Such A Long Journey, which was awarded a long list of honours and distinctions (Commonwealth Writer’s

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Prize for best book in 1991, The Canadian Governor- General’s award, and shortlisted for the Booker Prize). Rohinton had a similar success with his more recent epic, A Fine Balance, a 600-page tale of Bombay and its inhabitants over an eight-year period starting in 1975. Once again the trophies quickly rolled in. Alongside the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for best book, and a spot on the shortlist for the Booker Prize, Rohinton received one of Canada’s most prestigious literary awards, the Giller Prize, followed by the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for ﬁction. Who, one may ask, would be more qualiﬁed than Rohinton to narrate the lived experience of Indians in Canada? He clearly has the stamina, distinction and vision to weave a powerful tale on the triumphs and tragedies of diasporic Indians in Canada. Rohinton’s twenty-ﬁve years in Toronto have only yielded two diasporic short stories: ‘Lend Me Your Light’ and ‘Swimming Lessons’ (Mistry 1987). Both are autobiographical texts, one explaining why the author left Bombay and what he ﬁnds in Toronto, particularly within its Parsi population, and the other debrieﬁng on the process of settlement and attendant fantasies. Thus out of a total literary production of over 1,100 pages, Rohinton has only 44 pages on the minutiae of immigration. Perhaps it is far easier to be a Thomas Hardy of Indian domesticity in Bombay than to sketch the interior landscape of displacement, ghettoization and racialized labour sites.

What did Maluka desire: a redemption in leaving? Paradoxically, the ﬁrst major novel on Indian immigration to Canada was written by someone who in some way can be said to be least qualiﬁed to produce such a text, for he was not a professional writer or a master stylist. This semi-autobiographical text entitled Maluka, published in 1978, is the work of Sadhu Singh Dhami (Dhami 1997). Sadhu Singh was born in a dusty village of central Punjab in 1906. At the age of sixteen he moved to Canada and started working in a saw-mill. His older Punjabi co-workers, impressed by his intelligence, greatly encouraged him to go to school and even promised to pay a subsidy for his education. Around 1924 Sadhu Singh enrolled in John Oliver School in Vancouver. After ﬁnishing high school he went on to the University of British Columbia, and from there to the University of Alberta, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Toronto. From this last institution he received a doctorate in educational psychology in 1937. After working in the incipient trade-union movement he secured a job with the International Labour Organization in Geneva and worked there until his retirement in 1966. In his 1960s he began to write the story of a young boy named Maluka, which really in most part is the life-story of Sadhu Singh and his times. Much like Kipling’s Kim, this is a script about coming of age during the colonial regime, a crisis of identity embedded in alternate modernities and cultural confusions, and ﬁnally a decisive leave-taking.

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The opening chapter of the text is entitled ‘The Lumber Mill’. This is apt, because when the ﬁrst batches of young Punjabi men began to arrive in Canada, in the early 1900s, a great majority of them found employment either in saw-mills or with the Canadian Paciﬁc Railways. With the transcontinental railway line having only recently been completed and as the provincial economy opened to modern economy, there were substantial opportunities for employment. From the immigration records we know that between 1904 and 1908, 5,000 men from India made British Columbia their home (Johnston 1984: 6). The bulk of them were from central Punjab and almost every one of them arrived in Vancouver the same way. First, they took a train that transported them from their native village to the port city of Calcutta, a distance of approximately 1,500 miles. From Calcutta they left by Japanese freighters for Hong Kong, a trip that could take anywhere from ﬁfteen to twenty days. Gurdeve Billan, who undertook this journey, recollects: They gave you the bottom grade, the basement. That’s the only place they had. Before we left we had to buy some groceries, portable beds, a stove and some coal. We prepared our own meals on the deck, we slept on the deck. There were no staterooms at all. There must have been over a hundred Sikhs staying on the deck. All night long and day long we stayed on the deck. If it rained, we would put up a little tent up there. We made our own meals there. There was a small dispensary, I think there was a doctor on board too, he gave me some pills. I got sick, I had never seen the ocean in my whole life. (cited in Jagpal 1994) In the early days, since the Canadian government had no ofﬁces in India, many of the immigration formalities like medical examination and interviewing were carried out in Hong Kong. This whole process could take several weeks, and once the paperwork was ﬁnished it took a month or so for the voyage from Hong Kong to Victoria or Vancouver. Maluka quickly became enmeshed in this new community of migrants. He secured a job working on the green chain at the Dominion Lumber Mills. It was a life of perpetual motion securing and managing large booms of cedar logs, heavy iron machinery with the constant shifting and din of chains and roller systems, and the humming of an incredible variety of saws: head-saws, band-saws, and rip-saws. But late in the evening when all the activity would ﬁnally cease, the men would retire to eat and drink in what were then revealingly called Hindu cook-houses (for Canadians all Indians without any ﬁner religious distinctions – Sikh, Muslims or otherwise – were simply Hindu). Sadhu Singh provides us with a graphic description of this hyper-masculine world: The ‘Hindu boys’, as the Indian workers, mostly Sikh farmers from the Punjab, were called locally, ran their own cooperative kitchen, each

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paying his share of the food and a day’s wage towards the cook’s monthly salary. Over a hundred of them were employed by the mill … The cookhouse which had a pantry and the cook’s room at the back, served as the kitchen, the dining hall and the club house. Most of the social life of the colony was lived in it, and hot tea was always on tap. Men walked in and out to relax and gossip, to argue and to quarrel, often merely to relieve boredom. Here they gathered to listen to the community leaders, who came from Vancouver, Victoria or other small settlements in the lumber mills on the Vancouver island, to collect money for a school or a Gurdwara, for a religious or political movement in the Punjab. Here the more gifted among them read aloud the Punjabi classics, recited poetry or sang familiar village songs stirring deep sentiments and powerful longings for the half-forgotten joys of old. (Dhami 1997: 12–13) And as for the living quarters we have the following description: Six long parallel sheds with tarred paper-roofs, each partitioned into small rooms with two bunks in each. They had been built on the marshy bank of the Fraser ﬁlled with mill refuse and covered over by soggy layers of saw-dust. With time, they had acquired a weather beaten dark-gray look, and had sunk almost a foot into saw-dust. In the passage way of these sheds, on both sides, hung dirty working clothes, almost touching the rows of heavy working shoes and the black gum boots under them, and on the worn-out boards of the ﬂoor the nail heads stood bare and shiny. (ibid.: 11–12) As these men lived their lives in the mills, cook-houses and bunk-houses – with occasional forays into the world beyond – the primary reference for them remained India. They regularly read from Indian newspapers, kept up extensive correspondence with their extended families, and if successful in accumulating capital often went back to buy land, get married, and build homes in the natal village. In all of their sensibilities, moorings, categories of thought, structures of feeling, cultural dispositions and practices they had little inclination or desire to transgress the symbolic or cognitive universe of their origins. The Ghadar movement that sought to free India militarily from colonial rule was born in their midst. Our protagonist Maluka, much like Kipling’s Kim, was comfortable with his native world and fellow men. And this communal solidarity and cultural bonds solidiﬁed as he used his elementary knowledge of English to translate and interpret the North American world for the beneﬁt of his countrymen. What was mute or invisible acquired a voice and visibility through Maluka’s ingenuity and linguistic interventions. He became the semiotic expert to domesticate

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the unknown world beyond the cook-house. Beholden to his gracious assistance, and acknowledging the potential of his youth, all of his friends encourage him to abandon the hardships of a dead-end life in the saw-mill to pursue the goal of higher education, so that one day the community could have its own organic intellectual. Eventually, Maluka is persuaded. He ﬁrst enrols in a local high school and then goes on to study at the university. But this larger world of education, which Maluka initially found so hard to traverse, soon poses its routine terrors. His parochial loyalties, cultural nationalism and male-bonding are soon tested in the world of ideas, books and changing moral codes. In high-school Maluka falls in love with a classmate named Doris. She is everything he is not: white, Christian, and a domestic symbol of the Empire. We are talking here of the 1920s. Despite these differences the two embrace one another. Since Maluka is seen as the child prodigy of the community, this romantic liaison across racial and religious boundaries traumatizes his sponsors. In turn, Maluka, the alterego of Sadhu Singh, feels oppressed and claustrophobic. The censoring eyes and inquisitional gaze of his countrymen lead him to yet another transgression: he abandons the historic symbols and ritual life of his religious tradition and stages a rebellious exit from his shack in the sawmill, the city which he had made his home, but above all the community of his natural and emotional solidarity. Much like the young James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, Maluka breaches the boundaries of his community of affection to discover and learn about life beyond his home and ‘race’. Leaving Vancouver behind, he goes on to to live in Edmonton, San Francisco, Toronto and Geneva. He is only fully redeemed by renouncing his primordial attachments to caste, ethnicity and religion. Maluka is a puzzling novel. Sadhu Singh is not famous as a man of letters. He has not received any literary accolades for stating the conditions and perils of migrancy. At best he is a minor writer. Yet he has persuasively succeeded in evoking some of the deepest sources of high modernism: the fragmentation of the self, unbelonging and cultural ambivalence. His literary inﬂuences, life-choices, intellectual citations and ideological possibilities are hybrid. One day he goes to address the Theosophists on the Hindu Upanishads, and on another he trains trade-union leaders in Marxian economics. Although he constantly talks about the politics of Indian nationalism, is deeply aware of Gandhi, and corresponds with Nehru, as an adult he never participates in the national movement. His preferred politics are that of the international labour movement. When it comes to theological allegiances, he wants ‘to tear the mask from the face of religion’ (ibid.: 302). The multicultural world that Maluka eventually creates can not be compressed into ‘Sikh’ or ‘Hindu’ diasporas. As Adorno rightly says in his memoirs, Minima Moralia, subtitled Reﬂections From a Damaged Life: ‘The past life of emigrés is, as we know, annuled, because anything that is not reiﬁed, cannot be counted and measured, ceases to

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exist’ (Said 1993: 333). The arrangements Maluka makes in the New World and the fundamental questions he poses can only be framed as those of cosmopolitanism. But more of this a little later.

Dilemmas of iteration and making a fetish out of belonging Iteration: repetition of an action or process; to do over again; to perform a second time; to repeat, to renew While the late Victor Turner once used to be widely cited, today we rarely hear of him or his work. His anthropological writings on pilgrimage and communitas I think can be very fecund for the study of comparative diasporas, for journeys of pilgrimage and the global mobility of diasporas bear a lot of family resemblances. In a classic essay entitled ‘Liminality and Communitas’, Turner proposed that historically all societies are in need of a constant exchange and dialectic between what he termed a structure and anti-structure (Turner 1987). Through the structural dimension we get law, economic production and morality. And the anti-structural formation, if it could be called that (and perhaps this is the reason Turner much prefers the Latin word communitas), provides social systems with speculative thought, works of art, utopian solidarities, strains of rebellion, in short unbelonging. While Turner celebrates communitas, as a social scientist he is well aware that societies cannot do without the order and stability of structures. But when the time comes for renewal and introducing new vocabularies, societies look towards liminal ﬁgures: prophets, charismatic leaders, poets, artists, and those who are generally seen as living on the margins of society. Turner’s reﬂections on liminality are worth quoting at length: The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae (‘threshold people’) are necessarily ambiguous, since this condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classiﬁcations that normally locates states and positions in cultural space. Liminal entities are neither here or there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial. As such, their ambiguous and indeterminate attributes are expressed by a rich variety of symbols in the many societies that ritualize social and cultural transitions. Thus liminality is frequently likened to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to darkness, to bisexuality, to the wilderness, and to an eclipse of the sun or moon. (ibid.: 95) In short then liminality is dangerous, transgressive, and thus regenerative. Since it seeks to introduce something new to culture through an ensemble of critical interventions and unrehearsed peregrinations it cannot be said to derive from iteration. In this essay Sadhu Singh’s protagonist would ﬁt Turner’s typology of liminality. Maluka is a ﬁgure who begins

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from within a structure and then turns into a ‘threshold’ person. For the rest of this essay I would like to examine an anti-type to Maluka: a person who is hardly ever assailed by self-doubts, is content to live within a structure and established cartographies, and is heroic enough to espouse a similar iteration for others. My material for this exercise is a recently published memoir by Tara Singh Bains (Bains and Johnston 1995). Tara Singh was born in 1923 in the medium-sized village of Sarhala Khurd in Hoshiarpur District, a region that has been a staging ground for much of the modern immigration from India to Canada. He was certainly not the ﬁrst in his family to make the journey to the west coast of Canada. In 1908 his father came to British Columbia and then moved to California. Ten years later he moved back to his birth place and built a sprawling three-storey brick house that earned him the nickname pakkianwala, one who owns a brick house, as distinct from the great majority who lived in more humble mud-walled homes. Tara Singh was four years old when his elder sister left for Canada. It was this sister who later sponsored Tara Singh to come and settle in Canada in 1953. The ﬁrst thirty years of Tara Singh’s life were lived in India. He received his early education in a village school, and later received instruction in English at Khalsa High School in Mahalpur. While Tara Singh does tell us a little about the subjects he studied, we get no insight into what sorts of books he read, and who were his literary or cultural heroes. In 1944, our young protagonist joined the Indian army in the rank of a sergeant, and moved to distant Jabalpur in central India. Not unlike other Indian autobiographies, in this we get very little information concerning Tara Singh’s internal life. However, from time to time we get some insight into his emotions and external joys: Freedom of life, total glow of life, started with my army career. It was a total relief and total happiness and relaxation too. I was by nature a hard worker, god-gifted to perform my duty honestly and to the maximum of my strength. At the same time I was impregnated with religious orientation Even when I was a little child I was attuned that way. I carried on my religious life very regularly, although not perfectly. I tried to get up before others, take my bath, complete my prayers, all before Sunrise. (ibid.: 17) Much of the early transcript of the memoir is occupied with genealogy, family history, and questions of honour and public behaviour. We do not have here any of the early digressions, ambivalence and secular openings of Maluka. The greatest rebellion of Tara Singh’s youth was against the authority of his father. Stuart Hall, the founding ﬁgure of British cultural studies, tells us in one of his essays on identity that he left the Caribbean for England to get away from his possessive mother (Hall 1987: 44). Tara Singh seems to want to

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leave because of his father. Although the family had not kept in touch with the sister who left for Canada in the 1920s, Tara Singh, through the family and village network, succeeds in locating her and persuades her to help him move to Canada. Although in the early 1950s Canada had a very restrictive quota for migrants from India, Tara Singh’s sister succeeded in persuading Canadian Immigration to let her brother emigrate. Like many others before him Tara Singh reached Vancouver without his wife and children. One of the ﬁrst episodes that he narrates of his arrival calls for some exploration, since psychologically this seems to be the most traumatic event in his displacement. As alluded earlier, Tara Singh was a man of faith. He lived the life of a believer and as a baptized Sikh that meant he kept his hair unshorn, wore a turban, and maintained other symbols of his religion. This inordinate commitment to an absolute God and his commandments was at odds with his local kinsmen. His sister’s family, either due to socialization or other covert cultural positions, had long abandoned the outside insignia of the Sikh code. And now Tara Singh’s clansmen insisted that his external appearance was going to be a deﬁnite impediment for him in securing a comfortable future. Such posturing was antithetical to Tara Singh’s very being and he refused to go with the cultural dictates of his extended family. In private, he experienced tremendous emotional upheaval and fear of the secular. Finally, sensing his great discomﬁture his brother-in-law and nephews left him alone. There was to be no leave-taking for Tara Singh. In Victor Turner’s terms he refused to be a ‘threshold’ person. For here we are talking, literally and metaphorically, of a postcolonial commitment to identity and cultural nationalism. Tara Singh saw no regenerative potential in transgressive high modernity. There was nothing satisfying about stigmata or negative freedom. And yet what amounts to a loss for Tara Singh, was earlier seen as a gain by Maluka. They both come from the same environment and similar class backgrounds but arrive at radically different conclusions. It is imperative to comment here that what to outsiders may appear to be a uniﬁed, monolithic, diasporic group is in fact based on the testimony of these two voices, fractured, and a site of multiple identities and disparate hopes. In terms of work, Tara Singh initially found employment at a family farm, and soon after, like the bulk of his compatriots, secured a job at a sawmill. Some of his recollections from this period of his life (early 1950’s) are worth reporting here: I started on Tuesday evening on the shift that went from 7:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m., and I worked until Friday before I was told that I was not being paid for my ﬁrst four shifts because they were considered a training period. That drove a wedge into my mind about the exploitative nature of the man we were working for, but I kept working. We were paid $1.45 an hour for eight hours, but when we did overtime, we worked for free. And it happened many times that we worked through

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Harjot Oberoi our coffee and lunch breaks and for some time after our shift was over. If we did not work, the job would be on the line. . . . The mill had two gang saws, and each shift these saws would cut ﬁfty thousand or sixty thousand board-feet of moisture-laden hemlock or ﬁr, heavy wood, with none of the lighter cedar as a relief . . . From the mill this lumber carried on to the green chain and down the green chain to the pull-off sections where we stood, two on each side, taking it as fast as it came and piling it according to size and order on wooden blocks, load by load, for removal by a carrier truck. (ibid.: 61–2)

Here the similarities with Maluka are striking. And like Maluka, responding to exploitative work conditions and ghettoization of the labour pool, Tara Singh became active in the trade-union movement. He soon rose to be a vice-president of his local sub-union and was elected as a delegate to attend the twelfth annual convention of the British Columbia Federation of Labour. But unlike the mature Maluka, Tara Singh also took a close interest in the affairs of his own ethnic community. He routinely organized religious festivals in his home town of Port Alberni and took a prominent part in many fund raising drives for cultural projects in India. In 1956 he served as a secretary-treasurer of the Canadian East Indian Welfare Society. The longing for things Indian comes out beautifully in the following passage: In those days, because my family wasn’t there, I read a lot. I was getting quite a few Punjabi monthlies from India – Aatam Science, from Calcutta, a very spiritual magazine, Sant Sipahi and Gurmat, two religious magazines from Amritsar, and Amar Kahanyan, with stories emphasizing Indian moral values, social discipline, and creating a better sensitivity of living. In English I read the Vancouver Sun every day, Life magazine every week, and Reader’s Digest monthly, and I would also read the odd magazine from the market, like Time. I also read The Sikh Review, from Calcutta, every month in English, and after I came to Port Alberni I started the weekly airmail edition of Hindustan Times. In 1960, due to a serious illness in the family, Tara Singh Bains returned ﬁrst to his own village in the Punjab and later settled at his wife’s natal place. Once again he became active in local and family affairs: setting up schools, starting new businesses, and getting family members married. After a six-year stay, Tara Singh again returned to Canada in 1966. This time around he was to stay put for over a decade and for the ﬁrst time brought along his wife, three sons and a daughter. The Indo-Canadian community in Canada was now beginning to grow rapidly in numbers and Tara Singh was to play a signiﬁcant role in its campaigns for self-representation through ethnic newspapers, cultural organizations and political activism. But something always stayed amiss for Tara Singh in Canada and

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in his memoirs in one place he makes an incredible confession: ‘So British Columbia looked to me like a desert place with only scattered oases’ (ibid.: 112). In the early 1900s Tara Singh’s father had gone back to India after a short sojourn in California; likewise, his son, once retired in 1987, was to spend an increasing time in India. This shuttling back and forth between India and Canada has become a marked feature of his life. One can only wonder what was behind this constant shuttling. The German philosopher Heidegger believed that the locus of the self is a place or habitat. There are, he states, authentic and inauthentic spaces (Heidegger 1962). For close to eighty years now, Tara Singh identiﬁes India and his village as the authentic place for him to be. It is this archetypal mobility that has perhaps made some in metropolitan societies theorise that immigrant groups have no sense of place.

Conclusions In conclusion, I would once again like to go back to Amitav Ghosh. In all fairness it must be said that his was a very preliminary statement on the study of the modern Indian diaspora. Many of the publications and materials that are available today did not exist in 1989 when he wrote his piece. Clearly a considerable amount of work still needs to be done before we can begin to speak authoritatively of the cultural sociology of India’s diasporic populations. One way of advancing this research agenda is by examining narratives, both in terms of plot (story) and discourse (ideology). It is troubling that a distinguished writer like Mistry has shown little interest in spinning any grand allegories out of Indian migration to Canada over the last hundred years. Yet without sophisticated literary interventions, we may still manage to gain considerable insights into this migrancy experience. For we can always fall back on what Walter Benjamin termed ﬂashes of memory. Perhaps Lyotard is correct when he argues that the epoch of grand narratives is over and we have moved into the age of small narratives. I have looked at two such small narratives in this chapter – one is suggestive of what has come to be known as cosmopolitanism (unbelonging) and the other is an instance of what may be described as cultural nationalism or simply nationalism (belonging).

References and further reading Bains, T. S. and H. Johnston (1995) The Four Quarters of the Night, The Life Journey of an Emigrant Sikh, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Benjamin, W. (1973) ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, New York: Schocken. Dhami, S. S. (1997) Maluka, Patiala: Punjabi University. Ghosh, A. (1989) ‘The Diaspora in Indian Culture’, Public Culture 2(1): 73–8. Hall, S. (1987) ‘Minimal Selves’, in Identity, London: Institute of Contemporary Arts Document no. 6.

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Heidegger, M. (1962) Being and Time, New York: Harper and Row. Jagpal, S. S. (1994) Becoming Canadians: Pioneer Sikhs in Their Own Words, Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing. Johnston, H. (1984) The East Indians in Canada, Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association. Lowe, L. (1996) Immigrant Acts, Durham: Duke University Press. Mistry, R. (1987) Tales from Firozsha Baag, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. —— (1991) Such a Long Journey, New York: Vintage. —— (1995) A Fine Balance, New York: Vintage. Said, E. (1993) Culture and Imperialism, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Turner, V. (1987) The Ritual Process, Structure and Anti-Structure, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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10 The South Asian presence in Britain and its transnational connections Roger Ballard

The rapid growth of Britain’s South Asian population during the second half of the twentieth century, such that it included nearly two million people by the turn of the millennium, is best understood as the most recent manifestation of a dynamic series of interconnections between the British Isles and the Indian subcontinent. These ﬁrst began to emerge as Britain set about creating an imperial presence in South Asia, and are now developing yet further – albeit on rapidly changing terms – in a post-imperial context. In that process of transformation 1947 was a turning point in three quite separate senses. In the ﬁrst place it marked the point at which, as Nehru put it, India fulﬁlled its tryst with destiny, and thus awoke to life and freedom: the British Raj had come to an end. Second, and just as signiﬁcantly, it did so not as a single unit, but as two separate states, which were before long to become three: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – each of which have followed increasingly different socio-economic trajectories as the years have passed. Third, and equally important, it marked the start of Britain’s post-war economic boom, and with it the beginnings of a phenomenon which ultimately precipitated some equally signiﬁcant transformations in the character of Anglo-Indian relationships: the large-scale immigration of migrant workers of South Asian descent. It is not that labour immigration was in any sense a novel phenomenon, particularly in Britain’s industrial cities. Every period of rapid industrial expansion during the nineteenth century precipitated acute shortages of unskilled manual labour, and the gaps were ﬁlled by recruiting additional hands from elsewhere, initially from the countryside, then from Ireland, and subsequently from Eastern Europe. However, as the post-war economic boom began to take off, these traditional reservoirs could no longer provide the necessary manpower, with the result that employers had no alternative but to adopt a much more open-minded attitude to labour recruitment. This led to a profound transformation. Whilst people of colour who found their way to Britain – as seamen, for example – had hitherto found it virtually impossible to break into the local labour market, they suddenly found that foremen were willing to take them on, albeit to undertake tasks which no-one else was prepared to do. And although all this was initially

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regarded as a temporary measure – no less by migrant workers than by their employers – it set in motion what eventually proved to be a process of reverse colonisation. Imperial transactions had manifestly ceased to be a one-way process. Such massive role-reversals do not occur instantaneously. Hence whilst 1947 may indeed have been a crucial turning-point, the foundations on which the process of mass migration subsequently grew up had begun to be laid down many years earlier. Moreover, the transformation is still under way. Britain’s Indian Raj collapsed many years ago, but, the ideological assumptions which were generated when it was still in place, such that British ways of thinking and acting were conﬁdently assumed to be innately superior to all things Indian, are still secretly shared by most members of Britain’s indigenous majority. British South Asians therefore still have an uphill struggle on their hands, but they are by no means pawns in the face of the resultant forces of racial and ethnic exclusionism – far from it. Just as in the process of migration itself, both settlers and their offspring have been actively – and indeed very successfully – engaged in devising all manner of strategies with which to resist, and indeed to subvert, the worst aspects of the exclusionary pressures to which they found themselves exposed. In many respects reverse colonisation, mounted in this case ‘from below’, has been a key to their success. Besides providing a highly effective basis for the construction of networks of mutual support, the maintenance of swadeshi-inspired lifestyles and their associated conceptual structures has provided settlers – and even more so their British-born offspring – with a series of equally effective platforms from which to challenge the ideological assumptions of Britain’s indigenous majority. On the face of it these developments are a comprehensively British phenomenon. Not only have they been generated in the context of the local social order, but they are also precipitating some far-reaching changes in its character. Nevertheless, members of each of Britain’s many South Asian communities are also involved in an elaborate series of transnational linkages, most of which are grounded in ties of kinship, such that they also continue to participate in all sorts of signiﬁcant ways in their communities of origin in the subcontinent. However, the intensity of these linkages varies. For those who grew up in South Asia, such ties are normally still intense: many still dream of returning ‘home’ on a permanent basis, as they had almost all initially assumed they would do. By contrast those born and raised overseas have – as we shall see – a much more complex relationship with their ancestral origins.

The growth of the South Asian presence in Britain Early history Although mass migration from South Asia was essentially a late-twentiethcentury phenomenon, its foundations were laid down much earlier: indeed

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contacts with Britain had a history almost as long as the imperial project itself. In her study of such contacts during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Visram (1986) identiﬁes three major categories of sojourner: ﬁrst, the personal servants of imperial adventurers and administrators, who accompanied their masters (and mistresses) on their eventual return home; second, seamen, all of whom worked in an equally menial capacity on British merchant ships, since they invariably served in the stokehold; and third, much more afﬂuent travellers who came to Britain in search of a mixture of adventure, excitement and professional qualiﬁcations. Both Gandhi and Jinnah fell into the latter category. Until the beginning of the twentieth century the South Asian presence in Britain remained minute. At any given time it would have included no more than a few hundred ayahs and lascars, a rather smaller number of students seeking professional qualiﬁcations, whilst the number of princes and other aristocrats – most of whom only made the briefest of visits – could probably have been counted on the ﬁngers of one hand. The outbreak of the Great War in 1914 brought about some dramatic changes. Since so many male members of the indigenous working class had left for the trenches, acute shortages of industrial labour soon emerged. As a result ex-seamen who had hitherto scratched out a living as peddlers suddenly found that their physical appearance was no longer an obstacle to gaining waged employment. Just as importantly, several British Indian regiments were sent over to France to reinforce the war effort. Since the use of Indian troops in the European context was wholly unprecedented, it was taken for granted they should promptly be shipped back to India once hostilities were over. A small number of sipahis bucked the trend. Taking advantage of their temporary presence in the imperial heartlands, they took take a leaf out of the ex-lascars’ book: having slipped quietly AWOL, they sought to take advantage of local opportunities. The going turned out to be extremely tough, no less for the ex-seamen than the ex-soldiers, since demobilised English soldiers were invariably given preferential access to the few available jobs. Yet despite the immense difﬁculties they faced, many of these early pioneers ultimately achieved a modicum of success. Very few did so by means of waged employment: instead most became peddlers, selling cheap clothing doorto-door, often in remote rural areas. Indeed their entrepreneurial efforts were so successful that by the early 1930s they began to send word back home to their kinsmen, indicating that if they could ﬁnd their way to Britain they would be able to earn and save far more than they ever could as peasant farmers back in Punjab – the region from which the great majority of seamen and soldiers had been recruited. Hence when hostilities broke out once again in 1939, small colonies of South Asian peddlers – the great majority of whom were of Punjabi origin – had established themselves in most of Britain’s larger ports, as well as in many of its major industrial cities.

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The post-war economic boom and its consequences Just as had happened two decades before, wartime labour shortages opened up all sorts of opportunities which had previously been closed to people of colour. Not only did many peddlers switch over to waged employment, especially in the munitions factories of central and northern England, but they were also joined by a signiﬁcant number of ex-seamen whose ships had been torpedoed in the Atlantic, and for whom the shift from stokehold to foundry was relatively straightforward. Whilst the precise number of men involved (for the South Asian presence in Britain was then exclusively male) is hard to estimate, it is unlikely to have been much greater than a few thousand when hostilities ended in 1945. At this point some sojourners took the ﬁrst opportunity to return home: one such returnee, who had a made a small fortune selling black-market nylons which his kinsmen serving on convoys had bought cheaply in New York, told me how he had used his savings to buy a motor car from a departing sahib on the dockside in Karachi. Then he drove it all the way back to his village in District Mirpur, far to the north. His was a homecoming to be proud of! However, many others decided to stay on, in the hope of reaping yet more beneﬁts from their British environment. At ﬁrst the going was extremely tough, just as it had been after the end of the First World War. However, it was not long before the British economy picked up once again, and then moved into a period of sustained economic boom which turned out to last – barring a few temporary hiccups – right through until the end of the 1970s. Having found themselves in the right place at the right time, the pioneer sojourners promptly took advantage of these burgeoning opportunities. Not only did they move into the newly available jobs for themselves, but they also went out of their way to assist their kinsmen and fellow villagers to make their way to Britain. The result was an ever-expanding process of chain migration which enabled members of the third-world peasantry who were fortunate to live in and around the villages from which the early pioneers were drawn to gain direct access to waged employment in metropolitan Britain. To be sure they started right at the bottom of the industrial hierarchy, but nevertheless the hourly wages even in those jobs produced an income stream which was far higher than anything they could hope to tap into back home, especially if they were prepared to work twelve hours shifts six or even seven days a week – as many did. Who were the migrants? Although the rapid growth of Britain’s South Asian population set off by the resultant processes of chain migration was very much a function of the postwar economic boom, these macroscopic ‘push’ factors cannot begin to explain why it was that the vast majority of settlers were drawn from a few highly restricted areas in the subcontinent, or how it came about that

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members of each of these groups have tended to follow ever more diverse strategies of adaptation since they arrived in the UK. In community-speciﬁc terms, the vast majority of Britain’s current South Asian population can be placed in one or other of four broad categories. First, there are the Gujaratis, most of whom are drawn from coastal districts in Saurashtra and round into the gulf of Cambay: within a current population of around three quarters of a million, roughly 80 per cent are Hindus and the remainder Muslim. A second major category is composed of Punjabis from the Jullundur Doab: within a current population of around half a million, 80 per cent are Sikhs and the remainder either Hindu or Christian. Third, there is an even more substantial body of Punjabi Muslims: well over half a million strong (for their numbers are currently growing very rapidly) around three-quarters trace their origins to the barani areas (areas in which irrigation is impracticable, agriculture is therefore entirely rain-fed) of Mirpur, Jhelum, Rawalpindi and Gujrat Districts, accompanied by numerous much smaller inﬂows from Chhach, Faisalabad, Lahore and so forth. Last but not least there are the Bangladeshis: with numbers currently approaching a quarter of a million, they are overwhelmingly drawn from District Sylhet in the far north-east. Each of these inﬂows has its own speciﬁc historical roots, which are particularly ancient in the Gujarati case. Trading links between the Gulf of Cambay and the Persian Gulf were established well over three millennia ago, and in the immediate pre-imperial period Gujarat was a major centre for the manufacture of cotton textiles, a large proportion of which was exported – mainly by Gujarati merchants – to all quarters of the Indian Ocean, and later on to Europe (Chaudhuri 1990). But although its local economy suffered a severe setback when Lancashire-based engineers managed to mechanise Gujarati textile technology, the Gujeratis’ entrepreneurial capacities remained undimmed. Hence when Britain began to open up its newly acquired East African possessions in the early years of the twentieth century, the Gujeratis were ready and willing to make the most of new opportunities, whether as craftsmen and engineers, or as small-scale traders in the interior. But although many prospered in those roles, their status was swiftly undermined when the East African colonial ediﬁce collapsed during the course of the 1960s. Whilst some of the settlers returned to India, the great majority took advantage of their formal status as British subjects to move onwards to the UK, where they received a ready welcome from enterprising kinsfolk who had already established a foothold in cities such as Leicester. By contrast the route by which the three other major components of Britain’s South Asian population found their way to the UK conforms much more closely to the model set out in the previous section. Since the British Indian regiments posted to France during the First World War were largely recruited in the Punjab, the peddler communities who provided the foundation for mass migration after the end of the Second World War were largely composed of Punjabi Sikhs and Muslims. Meanwhile ex-seamen

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provided the bridgeheads around which two further communities – the Mirpuris from what is now Azad Kashmir, and the Sylhetis from northeastern Bangladesh, from where the vast majority of lascars serving in the British merchant navy were recruited – also began to establish themselves in the UK. Once the mass-transit system promoted by chain migration was in place, these four communities gained a near-monopoly of migratory opportunities within the British labour market. However much members of other communities rooted elsewhere in the sub-continent might wish to muscle in on these arenas, they were in no position to compete with the operators of these well-established networks. Diversities in trajectories of adaptation and mobility The founders of all the major components of Britain’s South Asian population shared many commonalities. Not only were virtually all of them of rural origin, and either peasant-farmers or craftsmen by trade, but very few arrived with any signiﬁcant educational or professional qualiﬁcations. Yet despite their shared socio-economic background, members of each group – and even more so their British-born offspring – have followed sharply differing trajectories of adaptation and upward mobility as the years have passed. In the very broadest of terms, Gujaratis, and most especially Gujarati Hindus who made their way to Britain via East Africa, have led the way upwards and outwards from the sub-proletarian position from which they all began, although the Punjabis from the Jullundur Doab – both Sikh and Hindu – were soon hot on their heels. Most members of the older generation used business enterprise as their stepping stone to success, usually starting with the ubiquitous corner shop, before moving on to establish much larger enterprises in either wholesaling, services or manufacturing. Meanwhile a high proportion of their British-born offspring are achieving a spectacular degree of educational success. Law, pharmacy, accountancy and particularly medicine are the preferred routes to upward mobility: no less than 20 per cent of the places in Britain’s medical schools are now ﬁlled by the children of British Asian (and very largely British Indian) parents. Whilst the Gujaratis and the Doabi Punjabis have generally been spectacularly successful (although close inspection also reveals that upward mobility is still strongly conditioned by caste), members of other two major components of the South Asian population – namely the Mirpuris and Sylhetis – have (thus far at least) lagged some way behind. This is not to suggest that the Mirpuris and the Sylhetis have in any way ‘failed’: on the contrary it is plain that they have achieved a great deal. A better way of putting it is that members of these communities have not, as yet, been able to carve out trajectories of upward mobility which are set at anything like as steep an angle as those now routinely being followed by their Gujarati and the Doabi Punjabi peers.

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How, though, are these differentials to be explained? Although many observers are tempted to adopt the commonsense assumption that there will inevitably be a high degree of correlation between ‘assimilation’ and upward socio-economic mobility, the picture which is currently emerging is proving to be a great deal more complex. Indeed there are very good reasons for suggesting that although the concept of assimilation is much used in public discussion, the use of such a terminology is much more of a hindrance than a help when one sets out to explore the strategies of adjustment adopted by both settlers and their locally born offspring. In the ﬁrst place it goes without saying that settlers – and even more so their locally born offspring – have been profoundly affected by their exposure to English social, cultural and linguistic conventions: indeed most members of the second generation are just as much at home in British as in South Asian cultural contexts. However, cultural competence is in no sense a zero-sum game, such that the acquisition of the capacity to act and react appropriately in one arena precipitates, of necessity, a diminution of competence in others. Quite the contrary. A much more illuminating way of reading what has gone on is that members of Britain’s South Asian communities have swiftly acquired a high level of bi- and indeed multicultural competence, such that they – just like members of all sorts of other similarly placed minority groups – are able to act and react appropriately in a wide range of differently ordered arenas. Hence whilst most British South Asians have now developed ﬂuent capacity to participate in arenas exclusively organised according to the conventional expectations of members of Britain’s dominant ethnic majority, this is in no way necessarily associated with an abandonment of their own ancestral roots, expectations and loyalties. Indeed it is precisely because the vast majority of settlers have continued to organise their domestic lives on their own terms that they have simultaneously managed to construct their most vital resource: the ethnic colonies which are now such a salient feature of the inner-urban environment through the length and breadth of the United Kingdom (Ballard 1994). The dynamics of adaptation Whilst these ‘little Indias’ are undoubtedly partially rooted in emotional feelings of nostalgia, it would be a gross mistake to assume that this is the principal reason for their emergence. Rather they are much better understood as ethnic colonies, or in other words as active arenas for the articulation and development of a distinctive set of human, economic and conceptual resources. As such they are the prime source of the social, cultural, spiritual and psychological capital on the basis of which to launch an ever widening series of challenges to which their members would otherwise have been defencelessly exposed. Although resistance in this sense is very much the norm, such that all sections of the South Asian population have been able to

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make a substantial degree of progress since their arrival in the UK, it is far from being a uniform phenomenon. Not only have the strategic objectives of British South Asian communities varied enormously, but so have the tactics they devised as they sought to reach them. As a result some very striking differences have now begun to emerge between the trajectories of mobility which each community has followed. As is only to be expected, these trajectories of mobility, grounded as they very largely are in the entrepreneurial exploitation of less well defended chinks in the established socio-economic order, and further reinforced by the creative utilisation of their resources of moral, cultural, psychological and familial alterity, have many dimensions. On the economic front settlers have gradually moved away from the sub-proletarian occupations into which they were initially directed, partly in an explicit search for opportunities which brought more substantial material rewards, and partly because many of those jobs – in textiles and heavy engineering – simply disappeared in the midst of Britain’s industrial holocaust in the early 1980s. Members of those communities which were already set on moving upwards and outwards, as were most of those of Gujarati and Indian Punjabi origin, were relatively little handicapped by these adversities. Not only had they already begun to diversify into all manner of small business enterprises – a trend which was now strongly reinforced – but their children were also doing well at school and college, from which an ever greater proportion now began to emerge with professional qualiﬁcations. This was also associated with parallel processes of residential mobility. Even before recession struck, many members of these communities had begun to move out of the decaying inner-city areas in which they had originally settled in favour of more attractive properties in the suburbs, where educational provisions were also of a much higher standard. As the 1980s progressed, this trend was yet further reinforced. Nor did mobility stop there. As young Asian professionals gradually began to realise just how seriously ‘glass ceilings’ were likely to constrain their ambitions, more and more decided that the best solutions was to move onwards yet again – most especially to Canada and the United States. Not only did they ﬁnd the constraints of racial and ethnic exclusionism to be much less severe on the far side of the Atlantic, but most were also able to take advantage of a ready-made network of ethnic colonies which their kinsmen and caste-fellows had already begun to establish in North America (see Chapters 8 and 9, in this volume). Whilst it is extremely difﬁcult to make an accurate estimate of the scale of such onward migration, a comparison of the results of the 1981 and 1991 Censuses suggest that the outﬂow during that period was in the order of 10,000 persons (virtually all of them ‘Indian’) per annum; moreover there can be little doubt that the scale of the outﬂow across the Atlantic increased substantially during the course of the following decade. Yet although the settlers whose ancestral roots lay in Gujarat and East Punjab overcame the obstacles with which they found themselves con-

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fronted with very considerable success – although it is also worth noting that these patterns were in turn yet further conditioned by issues of religious, caste and sectarian afﬁliation – the trajectories followed by two further components of South Asian presence in Britain, namely the Potohari Punjabis from in and around the Mirpur region in Azad Kashmir, and Sylhetis from the far north-eastern corner of Bangladesh, have on the face of it been far less impressive. Not only have both these communities continued to increase very rapidly in size, partly because of their members, relatively high fertility rate, and partly as a result of still ongoing processes of family reunion, but in residential terms their members are still overwhelmingly conﬁned to inner-city areas, such that in numerical terms they actively dominate the localities which they have effectively colonised. The communities into which they have consequently aggregated are in many ways even more tight-knit and even more mutually supportive than those established by their Punjabi and Gujarati counterparts. The degree of educational and socio-economic mobility which ‘Pakistanis’ and ‘Bangladeshis’ have so far achieved, however, is a great deal less impressive than those of people whom large-scale data-collection exercises categorise as ‘Indian’ (see, for example, Modood et al. 1997). It is precisely in those cities in the Pennine region of northern Britain where Mirpuri and Sylheti settlers have established ethnic colonies in which violent clashes between the members of these communities and the police erupted during the summer of 2001. The extent of the underlying differences are further underlined by two further factors. Not only have similar disturbances not erupted in those (usually much more suburban) areas where other sections of the South Asian population have now established themselves, but many Hindu spokesmen have gone out of their way to contrast the much more peaceful outlook of members of their own community with what they suggest are the innately violent proclivities of their much less reasonable and sophisticated Muslim counterparts. Just how much store should we put by arguments of this kind? That very signiﬁcant differences have now emerged between the various subsections of Britain’s South Asian population is plain to see. How, though, are they to be explained? Islamophobia and cultural racism? In considering arguments to the effect that it is a commitment to Islam which precipitates all manner of pathological behaviour, it is worth remembering that almost of all the most enthusiastic articulators of that perspective within Britain’s Hindu communities are also actively involved in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which is in turn closely afﬁliated with extreme nationalist – and hence strongly anti-Muslim – political movements back in India. In other words such arguments also substantially replay an ideological position which has largely been responsible for precipitating an

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ever-sharper degree of ethno-religious polarisation between India’s Hindu majority and its Muslim minority. Given the context in which they were originally generated, loaded arguments of this kind clearly need to be treated with extreme care. Unfortunately, however, such arguments are grounded in a perspective which is closely congruent with (and which has to a signiﬁcant extent been derived from) deep-seated European assumptions of the necessary inferiority of all things Islamic (Daniel 1996; Ballard 1996). Hence there is a strong sense in which members of Britain’s indigenous majority as well its Hindu minority all share a common commitment to Islamophobia. Indeed it is on this basis that some observers have argued that the principal cause of British Muslims’ much more severe condition of relative deprivation as opposed to their Hindu and Sikh counterparts is the outcome of their exposure to a virulently Islamophobic form of cultural racism. How effective is the explanatory force of such an argument? Whilst it is undoubtedly the case that anti-Islamic sentiments are an even more deeply entrenched component of the British cultural tradition than they are in South Asia, there is little evidence that most members of the indigenous majority can accurately differentiate between South Asians who are Muslims and those who have other religious afﬁliation: indeed in the ﬁrst instance they are all popularly identiﬁed as ‘Pakis’. If so it seems most unlikely that potential discriminators’ preferential treatment of Hindu and Sikh South Asians as compared with their Muslim counterparts is the central source – or even a marginally signiﬁcant source – of the marked differentials between the socio-economic achievements of members of these two broad population groups. This is not, of course, to suggest that ethno-racial exclusionism is not a very signiﬁcant handicap, but only to suggest that its impact is likely to be broadly similar on members of both groups, and that we therefore need to look elsewhere in order to explain the observed outcomes. Social capital? With that in mind, alternative – and more plausible – explanations of these differences are not hard to identify. Whilst only a small minority of South Asian migrants arrived in Britain with technical and professional qualiﬁcations beneath their belts, enabling them to compete (although with how much success is another matter) at much higher levels in the employment market, and although the vast majority who were of rural origin all shared the strengths of a broadly peasant outlook, it is now quite clear that the precise levels of prosperity which settlers enjoyed immediately prior to their arrival had a far-reaching impact on the trajectories of adaptation which they subsequently followed. In this respect not only were the skills and competencies acquired by those who had spent some time in East Africa before moving on to Britain clearly a major adaptive resource, but levels of economic development in direct migrants’ villages of origin also

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had a similar effect. Hence migrants drawn from areas with a long-standing history of agricultural prosperity, as in the case of the Jullundur Doab in Punjab and the Saurastra region of Gujerat, also found they had richer resources of human capital – particularly in terms of educational experience and technical skills – than those who arrived from much less agriculturally prosperous (and so much less economically developed) areas such as Mirpur and Sylhet. This is not, of course, to suggest that Mirpuris and Sylhetis will consequently remain for ever handicapped as a result, but only that they had a considerable amount of ground to make up as compared with their initially rather better equipped Jullunduri and Gujarati counterparts. Marriage rules and cultural capital Although such considerations go a long way towards explaining current variations in trajectories of adaptation and mobility as between differing subsections of Britain’s South Asian population, it is by no means the end of the story. There are also some very signiﬁcant differences in the cultural capital on which settlers have drawn in implementing their strategies of ethnic colonisation, many of which are rooted in the apparently wholly arcane sphere of marriage rules. Stated baldly, there is a sharp difference between the marriage rules followed by Hindu and Sikh migrants, all of whom practice rules of gotra exogamy, and those deployed by their Muslim counterparts. Amongst the latter not only are cousin-marriages permitted, but amongst the Pakistanis, and most especially amongst the Mirpuris, such marriages are actively preferred, so much so that over 60 per cent of all Mirpuri marriages are contracted between ﬁrst cousins. What signiﬁcance might all this have? Leaving the issue of migration wholly to one side for one moment, the practice of gotra (clan) exogamy has two major consequences. First, families have no prior obligations with respect to either making or accepting offers of riste (marriage) once their offspring reach marriageable age; on the contrary, they can make their choices relatively freely within the limits of the endogamous jati (clan). Second, the fact that all marriages are arranged in this way not only means that agnates (those to whom one is related by descent) and afﬁnes (those two whom one is related by marriage) form two quite separate and nonoverlapping social categories, but also that each family, and indeed each individual within each family, has links with a wide range of ristedar afﬁnes (afﬁnal kin) who are spatially scattered across a number of neighbouring villages. By contrast where frequent close-kin marriage is not just permitted, but is the actively preferred option, that distinction is almost entirely eliminated. As a result kinship networks are not only much more tightly inturned but are also very much less spatially extensive. My concerns here are not so much with what consequences these differences in kinship structure have had within their immediate South

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Asian context, but rather with the impact which they have had on processes of migration and resettlement, and on their users’ subsequent trajectories of adaptation and socio-economic mobility. In an earlier paper (Ballard 1990) I discussed at some length how it was that these differences went a very considerable way towards explaining why it was that Pakistanis in general, and Mirpuris in particular, not only delayed reuniting their families in Britain for very much longer than did Jullunduri counterparts, but also tended to form far more tight-knit, in-turned, and hence socially and culturally conservative communities than did their Jullunduri – and indeed Gujarati – fellow-migrants. In other words these differences in the precise characteristics of the cultural capital on which members of these two broad categories drew – and are indeed still drawing – have yet further reinforced the differential impact of the differences in social capital which were outlined in the previous section. Once one takes all these issues into account – and unfortunately there is no space to explore all their many ramiﬁcations within the constraints of this chapter – the almost wholly deprivationist view which is implicit in contemporary concepts of cultural racism can very largely be put to one side. Although undoubtedly subjected to ethno-racial exclusionism, all South Asian settlers in Britain – whatever their speciﬁc community afﬁliation – are not just active agents in their own cause, but are making maximum use of whatever forms of social, cultural, technical, economic, educational and cultural capital to which they have access. There is no better route to upward mobility. But to the extent that the precise character of those assets varies as between all the many subsections of this population, so – as is only to be expected – their trajectories of adaptation are similarly diverse. With this in mind it follows that the deliverers of public services (from the police onwards) to Britain’s Mirpuri and Sylheti communities face such a challenging task not so much because of their perverse refusal to assimilate – as is commonly supposed – but rather because they are making particularly intensive use of their ancestral cultural capital as they build new lives for themselves in Britain. To be sure, as recent events in Oldham and Bradford have very clearly shown, many members of Britain’s indigenous majority strongly resent their use of very public strategies of alterity; but as the police discovered to their cost, concerted attempts to ignore – and thus to suppress – such plurality by imposing a policy of zero tolerance are invariably entirely counter-productive. Whether in the riot-torn Pennine region, or in much more prosperous cities such as Leicester and Southall in which Gujarati and Jullunduri settlers are much more salient, Britain has yet to wake up to the pluralising consequences of South Asian strategies of ethnic colonisation.

Transnational connections It is now becoming increasingly obvious that the consequences of largescale migration from Britain’s former imperial possessions in South Asia

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have been much more far-reaching than most commentators – committed as most of them were to assimilationist expectations – ever appreciated. This does not mean that these processes of colonisation ‘from below’ are restricted to Britain. On the one hand they are part of a much more global phenomenon in which the transnational networks ‘from below’ are steadily transforming the structure of the post-colonial world order, and on the other they are also having a far-reaching impact on migrants’ countries, regions and villages of origin. The dynamics of transnational networks Migration invariably precipitates transnational networks, which operate in at least two distinct but mutually complementary ways. In the ﬁrst place the process of chain migration gives rise to a kind of long-distance escalator. This escalator enables those able to step on to it to be transported out of the positions of relative poverty in which they would otherwise have been conﬁned in order to take advantage of the radically enhanced patterns of opportunity available elsewhere. When the lower end of the escalator is located amongst very small-scale peasant farmers in the third world, whilst the upper end reaches into a metropolitan city in the developed world, the advantages which accrue from stepping aboard are immense, and lead quite directly to what the British authorities describe as ‘the pressure to migrate’. Each of the networks which support these counter-hegemonic entrepreneurial ﬂows also have a much more complex internal dynamic of their own. The prospect of gaining access to sharply higher material opportunities elsewhere may be the proximate cause of stepping aboard such escalators – be they peasant farmers or software engineers – yet it does not mean they do not thereby leave their pasts behind them. Quite the contrary: they remain tied to their family and kinsfolk back home through they very same networks of reciprocity out of which the escalator itself is constructed. The consequences of all this are far-reaching. Not only do almost all migrants initially assume that their departure is but a temporary phenomenon (even if they subsequently ﬁnd themselves taking up much more permanent residence overseas than they had ever expected), but no matter how long they stay abroad, most also retain strong feelings of obligation and loyalty to their kinsfolk back home. Hence migrants typically remit a substantial proportion of their earnings during their initial period of overseas residence, which are usually deployed in such a way as to improve the living standards, as well as the social standing, of their family back home. In so doing the typical initial investment is the construction of a new, improved, and above all prestigious family residence, followed by (although it is often a poor second) investment in such things as additional agricultural land and machinery, providing a substantial dowry for their unmarried sisters and sponsoring public rituals and shrines. These remit-

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tance inﬂows frequently have a far-reaching impact on the character and structure of the local economy. It is especially true when chain migration results in a signiﬁcant proportion of the local population in a speciﬁc area moving overseas, though the long-term consequences of these developments can be extremely varied. Family reunion and its consequences One of the most important determinants of the resultant outcomes is the stability of the inﬂow of migrant remittances over time, which is in turn largely a function of migrants’ strategies of family reunion. The reasons for this are quite straightforward. In rural contexts most extended families ﬁrst dip their toes into the water by sending one or more of their younger male members overseas, in the expectation that they will remit a substantial proportion of their earnings back home. This arrangement is inevitably unstable in the longer run, since the migrants are thereby separated for a long period not just from their wider extended family, but above all from their wives and children. However, as soon as such migrants decide to call their wives and children to join them overseas, as (visa restrictions permitting) they almost invariably eventually do, the proportion of their earnings which they are in a position to remit inevitably drops sharply. When this occurs on a substantial scale – for such changes in family policy tend to occur in waves – the sudden drop in remittance ﬂows invariably has much more than merely domestic consequences, since such developments swiftly puncture the remittance-dependent booms which are invariably generated at the far end of such transnational linkages. Yet this is by no means necessarily the end of the story. In the ﬁrst place it is often the case that once the initial migrants have secured their own and their family’s position within the ethnic colonies which they have begun to construct around themselves overseas, they may once again begin to generate a surplus which makes investment back home a realistic possibility. Second, and just as important, is the question of just where and on what basis they choose to organise their children’s marriages. Marriage strategies In the immediate aftermath of migration, most migrants’ marriage strategies are quite straightforward: they continue to make ristes for their children on exactly the same basis, and with just the same kind of status-inspired objective in mind, as they would have deployed had they stayed at home. As a result the vast majority of early settlers’ children’s marriages were arranged and celebrated not in the diaspora, but in the immediate vicinity of migrants’ ancestral villages. Doing so not only enabled these pioneer entrepreneurs to cash in their global achievements for local prestige (Gardner 1995), but also facilitated the entry of ever-grateful sons and daughters-in-law into the UK.

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In the longer run, however, the potential contradictions inherent in matches arranged in this way tend to become steadily more salient. When one partner (and especially the female partner) had been born, raised and educated in a metropolitan context, then however attractive a riste may have seemed to their parents, most of whom continued to operate in homevillage terms, there was nevertheless a strong prospect that their offspring would view the person with whom they were being betrothed as little more than an unsophisticated rural hick who is wholly unable to keep her (and more especially his) end up, either socially or economically, in a European context. Given their unpropitious foundations, such matches frequently ran into difﬁculty; worse still, a signiﬁcant proportion began to collapse in mutual acrimony. Whilst parents were often angered and perplexed by these developments, their offspring were only too well aware of the underlying contradictions: hence they began to mount ever more pressing campaigns to persuade their elders to change their marriage strategies. Signiﬁcantly enough, few suggested that customary preferences for caste endogamy and so forth should be completely abandoned; rather they urged their parents to make much more active attempts to seek out ristes within the ethnic colonies which were growing up overseas, rather than automatically putting out feelers back home. The outcome of these efforts have been far from uniform, for the younger generation’s success in introducing these reforms has turned out to be heavily dependent on the character of the marriage rules conventionally deployed with the community to which they belonged. Where the choice of riste is relatively open – as it is in the case where gotra exogamy is the norm – it was very easy for parents to redirect their search towards a diasporic arena. Since they had no prior obligations to offer such riste in any given direction, they did not disappoint anyone in particular by so doing. In systems where cousin marriage is the norm, such that brothers and sisters expect to be given priority in the arrangement of riste between each other’s children, the reverse is the case. Migrants’ close kin back home take it for granted that their offers of riste should be accepted as a matter of principle. They have a right to ﬁrst refusal with respect to such a match, and those who have been fortunate enough to establish themselves overseas have a powerful moral obligation to assist their nephews and nieces to take that crucial ﬁrst step onto the escalator. In these circumstances young people’s protests that the relationship might not work out are much more likely to be buried in the face of overwhelming feelings of wider family obligation – and thus to be over-ridden. The construction of transnational networks in an exogamous context By the end of the nineteenth century Sikh and Hindu entrepreneurs from the Jullundur Doab had begun to establish themselves in a number of

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overseas destinations, including Singapore, Hong Kong, British Columbia and East Africa. To this day evidence of their success is still readily visible in their home villages in the form of crumbling palaces still showing the last remnants of the colourfully decorated stuccoed façades in the prestigious styles typical of the early twentieth century. As one walks through such villages, careful inspection allows one to identify a whole succession of different building styles: those which feature much larger modern bricks in the British colonial style, then those which make increasingly extensive use of reinforced concrete, until one eventually reaches recently constructed kothis featuring marble ﬂoors and elaborately pillared balconies. What is particularly striking about all these buildings, regardless of their age, is that they rarely appear to have been lived in for very long. Invariably built in what was the height of fashion in their time, they appear above all to have been constructed as very public markers of their builders’ overseas achievements; but to the extent that it was only possible for emigrants to ﬁnance such initiatives relatively late in life – by which time their wives and children had most usually joined them overseas – these palaces rarely formed the principal focus of their owners’ extended families’ domestic activities. Whilst this provides the clearest possible evidence that most migrants adopted an overseas domicile relatively quickly, that certainly did not mean that their transnational linkages had come to a swift end – far from it. On the one hand, these elaborately constructed palaces were a very public statement that they still cared a great deal about their status and reputation back home, no matter how extended their absence overseas may have been. On the other hand, their fellow villagers were themselves keen to keep those links open – for without them they would lose the opportunity to place their own offspring on the escalator to metropolitan prosperity. During the early phases of Jullunduri emigration, during which migrants’ most favoured destinations lay in East Asia, East Africa and the west coast of North America, most of those involved still preferred to arrange their children’s riste back home in Punjab, which could be elaborately celebrated in those carefully constructed palaces. Although this pattern was also sustained during the initial phases of settlement in Britain, by the early 1970s some radical changes began to take place. Thanks to the availability of substantial numbers of potentially suitable partners in the UK, together with growing pressure from young people themselves, a shift of strategy began to take place. As we saw earlier, an ever-increasing number of riste began to be arranged within the overseas arena. What is very striking about these developments is that they soon ceased to be constrained by national boundaries. Although still overwhelmingly caste-speciﬁc, the Jullunduri marriage market soon became global in character, reaching out to Singapore, Hong Kong, Kenya, and above all to North America. Kinship networks became global in scope. Marriage matches based in India came to be regarded as a fall-back option

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which was only seriously considered when a suitable arrangement could not be made in the diaspora. The whole ediﬁce steadily disconnected itself from its Punjabi roots, and in that sense moved further and further ‘offshore’. That process continues with some vigour – particularly amongst young well-educated professionals – to this day. Close kin marriage and the construction of transnational networks Unlike Jullundur, Mirpur does not lie in the easily irrigable plains of Punjab, but at the point where the Potohar plateau runs into the outer foothills of the Himalayas, just to the east of the river Jhelum. Whilst a good deal more densely populated – at least in terms of persons per cultivable acre – than Jullundur, so the mean size of each family’s holdings is, and always has been, very much smaller. Moreover Mirpuris also suffered from a further disadvantage: their incorporation into the princely state of Kashmir, whose rulers were notorious for imposing high taxes on their subjects, whilst providing a much lower level of public services than those available in neighbouring districts in British India. Against all this Mirpur has only one positive environmental advantage: its close proximity to the mountains of the Pir Panjal means that the district receives a high and largely reliable rainfall. Given all this, not only has Mirpur’s population always been a good deal less prosperous than Jullundur’s, but its members have had – and still have – access to many fewer infrastructural resources. Yet despite all these disadvantages the Mirpuris have become even more extensively involved in transnational activities than the Jullunduris, even if the consequences of that engagement have precipitated some rather different outcomes. Mirpuris have a long history of involvement in translocal employment, since the crews of the river boats which handled Punjab’s trade with the Indian Ocean had long been recruited from this area, as well from the Chhach District, located some 50 miles to the west on the banks of the river Indus. The 1880s saw two parallel developments: ﬁrst the construction of railway links from both Karachi and Bombay into the interior of Punjab (which immediately undercut river transport in terms of both cost and speed), and second, the British merchant navy’s switch from sail to steam. European seamen were most unwilling to work in the stokeholds of the new ships, especially in tropical conditions, so opening up an alternative source of employment for redundant Mirpuri and Chhachi boatmen. They jumped at the chance, and soon gained a virtual monopoly over stokehold jobs on merchant ships operating out of Karachi and Bombay – a position which they managed to sustain until oil ﬁnally replaced coal after the end of the Second World War. Mirpuri and Chhachi seamen therefore had a lengthy experience of transnational movement, but very few looked beyond the niche which they had secured within the global labour market. Hence whilst a few men

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jumped ship in search of better opportunities ashore in cities from London to Sydney and all points in between, the great majority appear to have preferred to serve out their contracts on board ship, and take their savings back to their villages in the Punjab at the points where the rivers Jhelum and Indus emerge into the plains from the northern mountains. Although mass-migration from Mirpur to Britain was no less a product of the post-war economic boom than was the parallel inﬂow from Jullundur, its dynamics turned out to be very different. A very small number of Mirpuri seamen had established themselves in Britain prior to 1939, and their presence was to be signiﬁcantly boosted in the years that followed, as sailors who had had their ships torpedoed from beneath them were drafted to work in Britain’s labour-starved foundries and munitions factories. Their numbers increased again when coal-ﬁred ships were phased out during the late 1940s. Employment in industrial Britain provided a welcome alternative to now-redundant stokers. But if Mirpuris established their beachhead in Britain, on a distinctive basis, the subsequent rapid growth in the scale of their presence was not: just as with the Jullunduris, there was acute demand for their labour. To be sure wages on offer were extremely low by British standards, and the jobs available were largely conﬁned to the night shift; but from a Mirpuri perspective they offered anyone prepared to work long hours (twelve-hour shifts six days a week were commonplace) an excellent opportunity to earn and save. The Mirpuris therefore set about making the most of these opportunities in a very different way from their Jullunduri counterparts. Whilst most of the latter set about reuniting their families in Britain within a year or two of arriving, most Mirpuris preferred to make regular visits back home. Many pursued a strategy of international commuting for one or even two decades before they at long last brought their wives and children to Britain. It was not until the late 1970s that family reunion became at all commonplace, and it took well over a decade before that process was anywhere near complete. At the same time Mirpuris had also begun to devise some very effective strategies by means of which to subvert the deliberate exclusionist objectives of Britain’s immigration laws. The Mangla Dam, employment vouchers, and cousin marriage Britain’s ﬁrst formal effort to halt the inﬂow of non-European labour was the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1992, which required unskilled workers from South Asia and the Caribbean to obtain employment vouchers before entering the UK. Despite its exclusionist objectives, the scheme’s initial impact was quite the opposite, particularly with respect to the Mirpuris. It is easy to see why. On the one hand the construction of Mangla Dam across the river Jhelum – which was completed in 1966, and which ﬂooded most of Mirpur’s most fertile land – led to a sudden intensiﬁcation of the pressure to migrate. In the absence of established transnational

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connections, those affected would have had little alternative but to go along with the Pakistan government’s grossly inadequate offers of compensation and resettlement. By contrast moving on to Britain was a far more attractive option – always provided one had the necessary kinship connections. The procedure was relatively straightforward. Textile mills in Yorkshire and Lancashire were still acutely short of labour, and foremen and personnel managers found the new rules a godsend. Mirpuris already working in the mills regularly enquired as to how many extra hands were needed, and promised that if the requisite vouchers were issued, new workers would be ready to ﬁll those slots within the month. Chain migration was consequently directly reinforced. This window of opportunity did not remain open for very long. Less than three years later the voucher scheme was put into abeyance on the grounds that it was being ‘abused’. Even so the Mirpuris still had a number of other tricks up their sleeves. In the late 1960s the Mirpuri presence in Britain was still overwhelmingly composed of adult males who had left their wives and children back home in their villages of origin, and whom they repeatedly visited at intervals of a couple of years or so. But as de facto British citizens, they were entitled to reunite their families in the UK. This precipitated a further set of cat and mouse developments. Established settlers’ most immediate response to the end of the voucher scheme was to exercise their right to call over their near-adult teenage sons (and/or their nephews whom they represented as their sons) to the UK, so that they could start work in the mills as soon as they reached the age of 16. Although the immigration authorities sought to close that loophole by insisting that settlers should call over their entire family, including their wives and daughters rather than just their teenage sons if they wished to implement their rights of family reunion, this also soon backﬁred. As the years passed the impact of the migrants’ earlier strategy of transnational commuting on the quality of family life had grown steadily more severe, and they were by now much more ready to go along with the immigration authorities’ demands. Hence far from restricting the inﬂow, the new rules led – especially amongst the Mirpuris – to a further increase in the scale and the permanence of settlement. Nor did the process end there. When British-based Mirpuris began to arrange riste for their offspring, their initial preference was just the same as the Jullunduris: to set up matches on just the same basis as they would have done in the absence of migration. Whilst the Jullunduris soon switched towards seeking out suitable riste within the diaspora, Mirpuris found themselves much more tightly constrained – thanks to the strength of their ideological commitment to close kin marriage – to fulﬁl their obligations to those of their siblings who were still based back home in Mirpur, and thus to continue to arrange their childrens’ riste accordingly. The British immigration authorities have made great efforts to stop settlers using marriages arranged on this basis to power the operation of now wellestablished escalators between rural Mirpur and the ethnic colonies. In

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practice their efforts have been largely unsuccessful. At least half (and possibly as many as two-thirds) of the marriages currently being contracted by young British-based Mirpuris are still arranged with their cousins from back home. Although these outcomes – which serve to illuminate the success with which Mirpuris have been able to subvert all the efforts of Britain’s immigration authorities to halt their inﬂow – are by no means solely a result of the strength of their culturally grounded commitment to close kin marriage, they nevertheless stand in sharp contrast to those groups (of whom the Hindu and Sikh Jullunduris are but a speciﬁc example) whose marriage rules include a commitment to descent-group exogamy.

Transnational entrepreneurship and the subversion of the post-imperial order Whatever additional objectives South Asian emigrants may have had, improving their own material conditions (as well as those of other members of their extended families and their as yet unborn offspring) clearly lay close to their hearts. Just how far have they managed to achieve that goal? In broad terms the answer is now very clear. Despite the positions of relative disadvantage within the subcontinent from which most of them began, and the very substantial obstacles they encountered as they pushed their way upwards and outwards through the post-imperial socio-economic order, they have met with a very substantial degree of success. Not only have large numbers of settlers managed to penetrate the exclusionary bastions which every country in the metropolitan swiftly erected around itself, so enabling them to tap into the much wider range of opportunities available there, but the success of their entrepreneurial activities has also precipitated far-reaching economic changes in their villages, regions and countries of origin. The precise scope, character and consequences of those changes have been almost as varied as the trajectories of adaptation which settlers and their offspring have pursued overseas – and for much the same reasons. Yet just what can be said by way of conclusion about the causes of these differentials – let alone of their consequences? The local in the global: transnational entrepreneurial strategies in context In considering the numerous studies which suggest that the Mirpuris are still amongst the poorest of all the South Asian communities established in Britain, and that their children are the least educationally successful, three salient factors are worth bearing in mind. The ﬁrst factor is the low level of economic development and especially the lack of infrastructural resources – most particularly in terms of education – in their villages of origin. The second is the tight-knit character of the kinship structures which are precipitated by their globally-unprecedented commitment to close kin

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marriage; as a result the Mirpuris’ commitment to the export of human capital along the escalators of chain migration has been sustained for very much longer, and organised to a much higher level of sophistication, than within almost any other South Asian groups. Third, these kinship structures have also had a far-reaching impact on the way in which status-seeking – an all-consuming South Asian priority – is conducted. As a result Mirpuris routinely ﬁnd themselves driven to engage in ever more byzantine countermanoeuvres in an effort to contain and subvert the efforts of their closest kin to advance their own interests, whilst the much more geographically dispersed and open-ended networks of those groups who marry exogamously ensures that their efforts to keep up with their rivals – be they Singhs, Kapoors, Mistris or Patels – pull them outwards in participation into social arenas which have become increasingly diasporic. In the light of all this it is small wonder that groups whose members had the good fortune to arrive in Britain with much more extensive social, technical and educational capital than the Mirpuris, and whose kinship structures actively encouraged the elaboration of translocal linkages, followed trajectories of upward mobility which were set at a much steeper angle than that achieved by the Mirpuris. Simply to cast the Mirpuris as ‘failures’ would be a gross mistake. Not only did they start the race with substantially greater handicaps than many of their peers drawn from elsewhere in South Asia, but they also chose to follow a signiﬁcantly different course whilst running it. It all depends on one’s yardstick for ‘success’. Dramatically fewer Mirpuris may have gained professional qualiﬁcations, or moved upwards and outwards from the innercity areas in which they initially established residential colonies, compared to their Jullunduri or Gujerati counterparts. They have nevertheless been far more successful in subverting one of the principal instruments whereby structures of global inequality are sustained in the contemporary postimperial world: immigration control. Of course this has only occurred on an intensely localised basis, but as a result of their thoroughly subversive entrepreneurial efforts, well over 50 per cent of Mirpuri’s population have by now managed to establish themselves in the metropolitan world: there is no way in which this achievement can be gainsaid. This also raises further questions about the spatial context in which such yardsticks should be applied, for once a body of people has gone transnational, it inevitably follows that yardsticks of success should be adjusted appropriately. For example, whilst numerous commentators have expressed extreme concern about the very low incomes and poor standard of housing in Britain’s Mirpuri and Sylheti communities, very few have sought to establish the extent of remittances or access to second houses back in the subcontinent. Once one does take such issues into account, the whole picture changes dramatically. No wonder: one of the migrants’ central motives in penetrating the obstacles designed to exclude them from the metropolitan world was to boost their families’ status at their point of departure. Not surprisingly, they have also achieved a considerable degree

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of success in this arena, although once again to differing degrees, and with markedly different consequences. Kinship and remittances As we saw in the case of the Jullunduris, most migrants invested heavily in refurbishing the houses in which the remainder of their families still lived, and when the time was ripe – usually towards the end of their employment career – many built vast palaces to mark their achievements. However, to the extent that exogamous groups were moving their domicile steadily offshore, most of these palaces were actually utilised much less than their builders had hoped and expected. The same was broadly true of their investments in agricultural land and machinery with which to farm it. Although substantial proﬁts could be reaped from such investments (especially in agriculturally prosperous areas such as the Jullundur Doab), their increasingly well-qualiﬁed offspring had no interest in supervising operations on their ancestral holdings. If and when they did take trips back to India they were far more interested in visiting Agra or Goa, rather than some village out in the sticks in Punjab. Land and houses were rarely sold whilst members of the older generation who had grown up in the village were still alive. That would have been altogether too shameful. However, once they had passed away their offspring usually disposed of those oncecherished assets at the earliest possible opportunity. In the Mirpuri case, the pattern of remittances was rather different. Given that they moved much more slowly towards family reunion, lone Mirpuri males working in Britain remitted the greater part of their earnings for a much longer period than their Jullunduri counterparts. House building therefore proceeded on a much more elaborate basis, and precipitated a huge boom in the local construction industry. This resulted in a combination of low levels of productivity in local agriculture, lack of basic infrastructural support, and wage inﬂation in the local labour market (precipitated by the inﬂow of migrant remittances). Agricultural investment – as opposed to speculation in land – brought no signiﬁcant proﬁts. Hence, once spectacular new houses had been constructed, most families simply placed their excess funds on deposit in the bank. By the late 1970s, the local economy in Mirpur was already following a very different trajectory from that in Jullundur. Although capital-rich, Mirpur’s superﬁcial prosperity was grounded in a high level of dependency on the continuing inﬂow of remittances. Meanwhile in Jullundur those self-same inﬂows served a very different purpose: to add frosting to the cake of an already thriving local economy. Development or dependency? Given all this, I found myself driven to adopt some very pessimistic conclusions when I ﬁrst began to take a comparative interest in economic

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development way back in the 1980s. Acute economic recession in the United Kingdom, which had a particularly severe impact on the Mirpuri community, had led to a sharp decline in the volume of migrant remittances; meanwhile the condition of virtual civil war which erupted in the aftermath of the Indian army’s disastrous attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar ensured that members of the Sikh diaspora entirely lost interest in investing back home. The impact of these developments in each area were very different. Whilst the Jullundur Doab may have suffered as a result of the loss of the frosting from its cake, let alone the disastrous consequences of nearly a decade of civil war, its agricultural prosperity was largely unaffected. By contrast the Mirpuri economy appeared to be in much more serious difﬁculties. Agricultural productivity had already declined so far that the district had already lost the capacity to be self-sufﬁcient in food grains, and the superﬁcial prosperity generated by the construction boom of the late 1970s had very swiftly faded. The local (and national) economy was in the midst of a severe, and apparently unstoppable, downward spiral (Ballard 1982, 1987). A visit to Mirpur in the ﬁrst year of the new millennium has demonstrated that such gloomy expectations were mistaken – at least in the short run. At least on the face of it, the Mirpuri economy has gone from strength to strength. A rash of new buildings, some as many as ﬁve or six storeys high, have erupted both in the villages and the towns; those which were constructed in the 1960s and 1970s have been left entirely in the shade. There are numerous cars on the roads, as well as teeming shoals of motor cycles; and the bazaars in the district’s qasbahs now boast ‘plazas’, two-storey off-street shopping malls selling all manner of consumer goods, whilst the sewing machines of whole streets-full of tailors literally hum with industry. Yet there are many ways in which all these outward signs of remittanceinspired prosperity are wholly misleading. Most of the grand houses turn out, on closer inspection, to be uninhabited: their owners have simply locked the doors and returned to England, or left them empty, with the exception of a single room which has been hurriedly kitted out to entertain guests. Moreover the architectural styles in which they are constructed are most revealing. Most residential properties in Pakistan – including those in the nearby capital city of Islamabad, which is entirely reserved for the elite – are invariably concealed behind high walls. Domestic space is very emphatically private. In contrast, the new houses going up in Mirpur almost entirely ignore these conventions. At present two styles of architecture appear to be in particular favour. The ﬁrst can best be described as the sky-scraper pattern: multi-storeyed buildings which are frequently adorned with all manner of glossy decorations. Even in the countryside such buildings are often clustered together in groups, where each successive construction is marginally taller than its predecessor, a clear indication that it is not the high cost of land which drives these developments. The second architectural style, can best be described as overblown neo-classical, featuring vast balconies and pillared

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porticoes, together with elaborately decorated stuccoed gable ends. These buildings are not just for living in, but rather serve as a very public means of expressing their builders’ personal achievement. Also, the audience to which these expressions are directed is not the world at large, but rather at their own immediate kin who have stayed back in Mirpur, and their fellow emigrants just down the road. An elaborate game of status competition is being played here – and very little else. Even so, the newly revived construction boom, which in turn supports a large service sector in terms of brick-kilns, steel and cement distribution, let alone the largely immigrant labour force actually responsible for building these palaces, is by no means the only sphere of the local economy which has been boosted by the spending of returnees. Just as signiﬁcant is the growth of bazaars and plazas supporting myriad small shop units which provide ready-made clothes, shoes, tableware, and a host of Western-style food items from Cornﬂakes to Nescafé to families making brief visits back home to celebrate their sons’ and daughters’ riste. In other words this is all very much a migration-speciﬁc phenomenon: there is little or no demand for such goods in nearby rural areas which lack Mirpur’s intense transnational connections. Thus in sharp contrast to Jullundur, where returnee spending only gives a relatively small boost to an already thriving local market for domestic products of this kind, the greater part of economic activity in Mirpur is predicated around the continued inﬂow of funds from overseas. It follows, therefore, that if this inﬂow were to cease – for whatever reason – the consequences for the Mirpuri economy would be dire. Whilst Mirpur’s success in people-export has undoubtedly generated a gloss of afﬂuence, its underlying economy – which has always been grounded in small-scale peasant farming – has been left almost untouched. It is easy enough to be impressed by the rash of newly constructed houses and dramatic developments in the major bazaars, but Mirpur’s real – as opposed to visitor-fuelled – economy is still overwhelmingly agricultural. In sharp contrast to Jullundur there has been no signiﬁcant investment in agricultural machinery, or in the tube-wells and pump sets which would facilitate the production of high-value horticultural crops which would ﬁnd a ready market in nearby Islamabad. Instead the local economy has become locked into a condition of dependency on its transnational linkages. Few young people in Mirpur look forward to a local future: instead the vast majority eagerly await an offer of riste from their kinsfolk overseas, and are vastly disappointed if it fails to arrive. A wry comment from one informant summed up the situation up with some clarity. ‘We don’t cultivate wheat here any more’, he told me, ‘we cultivate visas instead.’

Conclusion: the dynamics of transnationalism Just how can we best set about making sense of the complex and frequently paradoxical outcomes of the diverse forms of post-imperial transnational

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entrepreneurship, of which it has only been possible to explore a very small portion within the limited conﬁnes of this chapter? Whilst the developments outlined here contradict the pessimistic and largely determinist conclusions of the greater part of late-twentieth-century European (and broadly ‘Marxist’) sociology, the wise words of the master himself provide an acutely perceptive signpost as to how these developments might best be understood. As Marx puts it in the opening sentences of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past’ (Marx 1954). Of course there was much that was missing from Marx’s vision, writing as he was from a mid-nineteenth-century Eurocentric viewpoint: not only did he grossly underestimate the revolutionary potential of cultural alterity, but he had little comprehension of the sociopolitical dynamics which would ultimately shape our contemporary postimperial world. Nevertheless it is quite clear that transnational entrepreneurs from South Asia, just like innumerable others drawn from every corner of the global periphery, are making history: however limited their achievements may yet have been, they are nevertheless beginning to undermine the established structure of the global order. It follows that they could not do entirely as they pleased, nor under wholly self-selected circumstances. They had to rely on chinks in the system opened up by chance contingencies, exploited by entrepreneurial activists ‘from below’, who continue to exhibit an immense amount of creativity as they set about making the most of the resultant opportunities. Yet although he was acutely aware of the importance of agency, and of the human capacity to act on one’s own terms in order to radically change one’s circumstances, there was a point on which Marx was grossly mistaken. In keeping with nineteenth century ideologies of progressivism, he assumed that ancestrally generated cultural assumptions would always be a handicap in the articulation of such processes. As the multiple dynamics of transnationalism described in this chapter – and indeed throughout this volume – dramatically demonstrate, Marx and most of his followers’ assumptions need to be turned on their heads: it is precisely by creatively utilising the resources of their ancestral traditions – whatever format they might happen to have – that South Asian transnational entrepreneurs have achieved so much.

References and further reading Adams, C. (1987) Across Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers, London: THAP. Ballard, R. (1982) ‘South Asian Families: Structures and Processes’, in R. Rapaport and M. Fogarty (eds), Families in Britain, London: Routledge. —— (1983) ‘Emigration in a Wider Context: Jullundur and Mirpur Compared’, New Community 11(1): 117–36.

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—— (1987) ‘The Political Economy of Migration: Pakistan, Britain and the Middle East’, in J. Eades (ed.) Migrants, Workers and the Social Disorder, London: Tavistock. —— (1989) ‘Overseas Migration and its Consequences: the case of Pakistan’, in H. Alavi and J. Hariss (eds), The Sociology of Developing Societies: South Asia, London: Macmillan. —— (1990) ‘Migration and Kinship’, in C. Clarke, C. Peach and S. Vertovec (eds), South Asians Overseas: Contexts and Communities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (1992) ‘New Clothes for the Emperor? The Conceptual Nakedness of the British Race Relations Industry’, New Community 18(3): 481–92. —— (1994) Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain, London: C. Hurst and Co. —— (1996) ‘Islam and the Construction of Europe’, in W. Shadid and P. van Koningsveld (eds), Muslims in the Margin: Political Responses to the Presence of Islam in Western Europe, Kampen: Kok Pharos. —— (1999a) ‘The Socio-Economic Educational Achievements of Britain’s Visible Minorities’, http://www.art.man.ac.uk/casas/pdfpapers/mobility.pdf —— (1999b) ‘The Demographic Characteristics of Britain’s Visible Minorities’, http://www.art.man.ac.uk/casas/pdfpapers/demography.pdf —— (2000) ‘The South Asian presence in Britain and its Transnational connections’ http://www.art.man.ac.uk/casas/pdfpapers/networks.pdf —— (2001) ‘Progress? But on whose terms and at what cost? The paradoxical consequences of successful transnational entrepreneurship’, http://www.art.man. ac.uk/casas/pdfpapers/progress.pdf Berthaud, R. (1988) The Incomes of Ethnic Minorities, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Bhachu, P. (1985) Twice Migrants: East African Sikh Settlers in Britain, London: Tavistock. Chaudhuri, K. N. (1990) Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilization of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Daniel, N. (1996) Islam and the West: The Making of an Image, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dhaya, B. (1973) ‘The nature of Pakistani Ethnicity in Industrial Cities in Britain’, in A. Cohen (ed.), Urban Ethnicity, London: Tavistock. Gardner, K. (1995) Global Migrants, Local Lives, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Helweg, A. (1979) Sikhs in England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kessinger, T. (1975) Vilayatpur 1848–1968: Social and Economic Change in a North Indian Village, Berkeley: University of California Press. Marx, K. (1954) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Modood, T., Berthud, R. and Lakey, J. (1997) Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage, London: Policy Studies Institute. Peach, C. (ed.) (1997) The Ethnic Minority Populations of Great Britain: Ethnicity in the 1991 Census, Volume Two, London: Central Statistics Ofﬁce. Shaw, A. (1988) A Pakistani Community in Britain, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Smith, M. and Guarnizo, L. (eds) (1998) Transnationalism from Below, London: Transaction. Visram, R. (1986) Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain 1700–1947, London: Pluto. Werbner, P. (1989) The Migration Process: Pakistanis in Manchester, London: Berg.

Chapter Title

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Index

Ahmadiya Anujaman Ishaat-Islam Inc. 137 Ajanta Pharma Mauritius Ltd 15 Ali, Wahid 134 Anjuman Sunaatul Jamaat Association (ASJA) 137 Arvind Overseas Ltd 15 Asian Paints 15 Association of Indians in America (AIA) 173–4 Australia, Indians in 10, 142–62 diversity of migration ﬂows 152–5 economic activities 155–9 history of migration 143–7 labour market integration and success 161 migration routes 147–55 population 147 Punjabis, Kannadigas and IndoFijians 155–8 qualiﬁcations/professionals 155–7 self-employment 157–8 transnational resources in the labour market 158–9 Avoidance of Double Taxation Agreement (India/Mauritius) 15 Babbar Akalis 185 Bains, Tara Singh 192–5 Bakr, Imam Yasin Abu 125, 139 Bank of Mauritius 18 Bastide, Michael de la 135 Batang Berjuntai Credit Cooperative Society 63 Bengali Association (USA) 173 Benjamin, Walter 186, 195 Berenger, Paul 31 n. 1 Best, Lloyd 133 Bhaba, Homi 186

Bhojraj Advani 111 Bhuckory, Somduth: Mauritius ki Shristi 15–16, 30 Bishop, Patricia Alison 134 Black Power Movement 125, 131 Bose, Subhash Chandra 22 Britain, South Asians in 197–221 adaptation and mobility 202–3 categories of sojourners 199 close kin marriage 213–14 cousin marriage 214–16 cultural capital 207–8 development vs dependency 218–20 dynamics of adaptation 203–5 dynamics of transnationalism 220–1 early history 198–9 employment vouchers 214–16 family reunion 210 Islamophobia and cultural racism 205–6 kinship and remittances 218 Mangla Dam 214–16 marriage rules 207–8 marriage strategies 210–11 post-war economic boom 200 social capital 206–7 transnational connections 208–16 transnational entrepreneurship 216–20 types of migrants 200–2 British Columbia Federation of Labour 194 Canada, Indian migration in 11, 183–95 Canadian East Indian Welfare Society 194 Capildeo, Simbhoonath 133 Caribbean Islamic Development

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Index

Organisation 136 caste identity in diaspora 4 in South Africa 35 in Sri Lanka 88–90 caste wars in Malaysia 8–9, 72–5, 76–7 Ceylon Legislative Council (1860) 91 Chaudhry, Mahendra 145 circular migration 119 Clarke, LeRoi 133 Clinton, President, election of 1 Comdari (Community, Development and Research Institute) 64 Commonwealth Immigration Act (1992) 214 Cook, Robin 1 Crains Technologies 15 Credit Union Promotion (CUP) Club 63 cultural renaissance 8, 9–10, 126–37 Davida Society, Durban 39 Democratic Labour Party (DLP) 125 desankritised sanskritisation 74 Dhami, Sadhu Singh: Maluka 187–91 diaspora, deﬁnition of 3 Divine Life Society 41 Donoughmore Commission and Report (1931) 91–2, 93–4 Dravidians for Peace and Justice (South Africa) 40 Dubai Airport Free Zone 111 Dubai Cargo Village 111 Federation of Indian Associations in America (FIAA) 173–4 ‘ﬂashes of memory’ 186, 195 Francis, Haji Muhammad Ysuff 134 free-labour migration 10 free migration 144 Gandhi, Indira 13 Gandhi, Mahatma 21, 22, 199 Gandhi, Mohandas K. 17 Gandhi, Rajiv 13 Gastarbeiter 7 Geiger, Wilhelm 86 Getah Credit Cooperative Society Limited 63 Ghosh, Amitav 183–6, 195 globalisation 5–6 Gopeesingh, Justice Lloyd 136 Great Britain, Asian communities in 11

Gujarati Society (USA) 173 Gulf states, Indian migration to 9 age 106 culture 114–17 economy 109–14 educational and skill levels 106 formation of diaspora to 102–3 future prospects 117–19 gender 104–106 labour skills 110–11 marital status 106 occupational status 107 professionals 111 region and religion 104 socio-economic characteristics of migrants 104–7 working and living conditions 107–9 Gulf War (1990–91) 112 Hall, Stuart 192 Hanif, Nahida 151 Hassanali, Mrs 137 Hindu Women’s Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago (HWO) 132, 138 Hindu Young Men’s Association (HYMA) 39 Hindujas 1 HPK 138 Hydal, Iqbal 137 Ibrahim, Dawood 113, 114 ideologicalisation of ethnicity 9–10 imagined communities 185 Immigration Restriction Act (1899) (NZ) 144, 146 incipient diaspora 7, 9, 102–19 indentured labour 123 Indian Arrival Day (Trinidad) 131, 132, 133 Indian Colonial Society of Madras 21 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), funding of 165–7 Indian Oil 15 Indira Gandhi Cultural Centre 14 Indo-Fijian Paciﬁc diaspora see Australia, Indians in Indo-Gulf trade relations 102–3 information technology industry 149–50, 159 International Convention on Refugees (1953) 84 Inter-Religious Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago (IRO) 134

Index Jamaat Al Muslimeen 139 Jashanmal Advani 111 Jebel Ali Free Zone 111 Jinnah 199 Jugnauth, Sir Anerood 13, 14, 31 n. 1 Kandyan National Assembly (KNA) 100 n. 1 Kannadiga world city diaspora 162 Karmandanda-Ji 136 Kashmir Liberation Force 185 Khimki Ramdas 111 Koperasi Kredit Rakyat (KKR) 62, 63–5 Koprasi Kota 66 Krishnan, Nizam 65, 66 labour, division of 6–12 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) 84, 85, 93, 98, 99 liminality 191 Maharaj, Dharmacharya Krishna 134, 135 Malaysia caste war 8–9, 72–5, 76–7 ex-estate workers in Pal Melayu region 65–7 ex-estate workers in squatter settlements 67–71 National Development Policy (NDP) 51 New Economic Policy (NEP) 51–2, 53–4 Pal Melayu estate 52–7 Tamil workers on Pal Melayu 57–65 Tamils in 8–9, 51–77 Thrift and Loan Cooperative Law 63 Manning, Patrick 132 Maraj, Vhadase Sagan 133 Mauritius, Indians in 7–8, 13–30 cultural pluralism in 23–4 historical background 16–19 Indian nationalism in 21–2 insider’s viewpont 21–3 language and identity in 17–18, 24–8 Mauritian nationalism 22 outsider’s perspective 20–1 religion in 24 Minshall, Peter 135 Mirpuris 6

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Mistry, Rohinton 186–7 ‘Auspicious Occasion’ 186 Fine Balance, A 187 ‘Lend Me Your Light’ 187 Such a Long Journey 186 ‘Swimming Lessons’ 187 Tales from Firozshe Baag 186 Mohammed, Kamaluddin 135 Mohammed, Nizam 135 Mohammed, Sumayyah 135–6 Muniandy 57–8, 68, 69, 70, 73–4, 78 n. 11 Munisamy, P. 70–1 Muslimeen, Jamaat Al 125 Muslimeen insurrection (1990) (Trinidad) 137, 139 myth of return 171 Nallathamby 73 National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) 125 New Zealand, Indian migration to 143–7 Non-Resident Indian Deposits (NRDs) 111–12 Non-Resident Indian (NRI) remittances 111–13, 165 Panday, Basdeo 123, 125, 132, 140 n. 3 Pantin, Archbishop Anthony 134, 137 Pantin, Fr. Gerard Arthur 134 Parasuraman 73 passenger migration 144 penny capitalism 65 People’s Credit Cooperative Society see Koperasi Kredit Rakyat (KKR) People’s Democratic Party (PDP) 125 People’s National Movement (PNM) 125, 126 Prabhupada, Swami Bhaktivedanta 41 professionalisation 6–7 Pubjab Agricultural University (PAU) 148–9 Punjit Rajnath Kanwar Maharaj 128 Rabindranath Tagore Institute 14 Rajagopal 73, 74, 75 Ram, Tarun 150 Ramakrishna Centre 41 Raman, Jankey 64, 78 n. 15 Ramgoolam, Navin 13–14 Rampersad, Indrani 136 Ravi-Ji 133, 135, 136 Razak, Tun Abdul 60

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Rekhi, Kanwal 166, 167 religion in the Gulf States 104 as identity in diaspora 3–4 in Mauritius 24 Tamil, in South Africa 40, 41–8 in Trinidad 129–30 repeated migration 6 Resurgent India Bonds 113 Robinson, A.N.R. 125 Sadhoo, Dharam Veer Sant Siewadas 133 Saiva Sithantha Sungum 40 Sakhi 174 SALGA (South Asian Lesbian and Gay Alliance) 174 Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) 132, 138, 139 Sanskritisation 73 Seewoosagur, Sir (SSR) 13 Sieunarine, Reverend Everson 136 Sime Darby 78 n. 13 Singh, Gurjeet 162 n. 8 Singh, Sadhu 191–2 Singh, Surinder 149 South Africa, Indians in 8, 33–48 apartheid ‘Group Areas’ legislation 36–7 caste system 35 Draupaudi ﬁrewalking festival 33–4, 42, 44–7 Gengaiamman festival 43 historical background 34–7 Kavadi festival 43, 47 languages in 34, 38–9 Mariamman ‘Porridge’ festival 42–3, 47 Tamil identity 37–41 Tamil religion 40, 41–8 South African Hindu Maha Sabha 39 South African Tamil Federation 39 South African Tamil Teachers’ Federation 38 South Asian Lesbian and Gay Alliance (SALGA) 174 Sri Lanka 81–100 castes 88–90 citizenship 93, 94–6 enfranchisement 92–3, 94 impact on national order 96–9 marginalization of migrant communities 94–6 migrant history 84–6

migrant origins and erasures 86–7 race-based ethnic identity 87–90 representational government 90–4 Sinhalese-Tamil conﬂict 8 Tamils in 9 Sudama, Trevor 131, 140 n. 4 Sulaimani, Imam Mustaq Ahmad 137 Taib, Tan Sri Muhammed 54 Tamil Guardian International 39 Tamil Mathar Sungum 39 Tamil Sangam (USA) 173 Tamil Youth Bell Club 70 Tampil Protective Society (South Africa) 39 temporary migration 6 Tentafour international Mauritius Ltd 15 Thomas Cook India 15 Thondaman, S. 94 Trans-Tasman Travel Agreement (1973) 145 Trinidad, Indians in 9–10, 121–40 cultural contestations 130–7 cultural renaissance 126–37 diasporic community 123–4 ethnicisation of Hinduism 126–7 hijab controversy 135–7 Indian Arrival Day 131, 132, 133 language and ethnicity 128–9 modernisation 126 Muslimeen insurrection (1990) 137, 139 national holidays 131–3 politicisation of ethnicity 124–6 religions 129–30 rituals and festivals 128 Trinity Cross 133–5, 138, 139 Turner, Victor: ‘Liminality and Communitas’ 191 twice migrant 142, 162 n. 2 United Labour Front (ULF) 125 United National Congress (UNC) 125 United States, Indian immigrants in 6–7, 10–11, 165–79 class divisions 167–9 construction of NRIs 174–9 earliest migration 169 entrepreneurs 168 ethnic identity and community 172–4 population 167

Index post-1965 migration 169 urban and suburban 170–2 Vajpayee, Atal Bihari 13, 14, 15 Van der Graaf (Governor of Ceylon) 88

Vishwa Hindu Parishad 185, 205 Warner, Justice Margot 136 White Australia Policy 146, 147, 159–60 Williams, Eric 125, 134

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