Global Indian Diasporas

publication series Edited Volumes 1 Global Indian Diasporas Diasporas Indian Global Global Indian Diasporas Global Indian Diasporas: Exploring Trajectories of Migration and The- ory present new historical and anthropological research on South Asian migrants world-wide. The authors share a strongly ambivalent feeling towards the mainstream issues highlighted in the ‘South Exploring Trajectories of Asians in diaspora’ discourse, such as the emphasis on the migrants’ relation to their homeland and the reproduction of Indian culture abroad. Therefore, this book can be read as a ﬁ rst attempt to focus Migration and Theory on the limits of the diaspora concept, rather than on its possibilities and range. From a comparative perspective – with examples from Edited by Gijsbert Oonk South Asian migrants in Suriname, Mauritius, East Africa, the UK, Canada and the Netherlands – this collection shows that in each of these regions there are South Asian migrants who do not ﬁ t into the › Indian diaspora concept. Thus we attempt to stretch the concept be- yond its current use by highlighting empirical cases, which raise the Oonk (ed.) Gijsbert question about the limits of the effectiveness of the diaspora as an academic historical/sociological concept. Gijsbert Oonk is Associate Professor in Non-Western History at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. ‘No concept is any good unless it can be questioned. No scholar is any good if he or she follows fashion slavishly. By testing the term “diaspora” almost to destruction the authors in this richly-re- searched collection have both revealed the limits of the concept and taken it in new, creative directions.’ — Robin Cohen, Professorial Fellow, Queen Elizabeth House, Univer- sity of Oxford isbn 978 90 5356 035 8 amsterdam university press www.aup.nl 9789053 560358 amsterdam university press Oonk_def.indd 1 31-10-2007 8:41:11 Global Indian Diasporas Publications Series Series Editors Max Sparreboom and Paul van der Velde Editorial Board Prasenjit Duara (University of Chicago) / Carol Gluck (Columbia University) / Christophe Jaffrelot (Centre d’E´tudes et de Recherches Internationales-Sciences- po) / Victor T. King (University of Hull) / Yuri Sadoi (Meijo University) / A.B. Shamsul (Institute of Occidental Studies / Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) / Henk Schulte Nordholt (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Car- ibbean Studies) / Wim Boot (Leiden University) The IIAS Publications Series consists of Monographs and Edited Volumes. The aim of the Series is to promote Asia-Europe Studies. The Series includes comparative research on Europe and Asia and results from cooperation between Eur- opean and Asian scholars. The International Institute for Asian Studies stimu- lates scholarship on Asia and is instrumental in forging research networks among Asia scholars worldwide. The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) is a postdoctoral research centre based in Leiden and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Its main objective is to encou- rage the interdisciplinary and comparative study of Asia and to promote national and international cooperation in the field. The institute focuses on the humanities and social sciences and, where relevant, on their interaction with other sciences. IIAS acts as an international mediator, bringing various parties together, working as a clearinghouse of knowledge and information. This entails activities such as providing information services, hosting academic organisations dealing with Asia constructing international networks, and setting up international cooperative projects and research programmes. In this way, IIAS functions as a window on Europe for non-European scholars and contributes to the cultural rapprochement between Asia and Europe. For further information, please visit www.iias.nl Global Indian Diasporas Exploring Trajectories of Migration and Theory Edited by Gijsbert Oonk Publications Series Edited Volumes 1 Cover design: Maedium, Utrecht Layout: The DocWorkers, Almere ISBN 978 90 5356 035 8 NUR 741 / 763 © IIAS / Amsterdam University Press, 2007 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or in- troduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Table of Contents Acknowledgements 7 1 Global Indian Diasporas: Exploring Trajectories of Migration and Theory Gijsbert Oonk 9 PART 1 CRITICAL HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES 2 Multanis and Shikarpuris: Indian Diasporas in Historical Perspective Scott Levi 31 3 ‘We Lost our gift of Expression’: Loss of the Mother Tongue among Indians in East Africa, 1880-2000 Gijsbert Oonk 67 4 Contextualising Diasporic Identity: Implications of Time and Space on Telugu Immigrants Chandrashekhar Bhat and T.L.S. Bhaskar 89 5 Separated by the Partition? Muslims of British Indian Descent in Mauritus and Suriname Ellen Bal and Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff 119 6 A Chance Diaspora: British Gujarati Hindus John Mattausch 149 PART 2 CRITICAL SOCIOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 7 Contested Family Relations and Government Policy: Linkages between Patel Migrants in Britain and India Mario Rutten and Pravin J. Patel 167 8 Diaspora Revisited: Second-Generation Nizari Ismaili Muslims of Gujarati Ancestry Anjoom Amir Mukadam and Sharmina Mawani 195 9 Bollywood and the Indian Diaspora: Reception of Indian Cinema among Hindustani Youth in the Netherlands Sanderien Verstappen and Mario Rutten 211 10 Contested Equality: Social Relations between Indian and Surinamese Hindus in Amsterdam Brit Lynnebakke 235 11 Afterword: Stray Thoughts of a Historian on “Indian” or “South Asian” “Diaspora(s)” Claude Markovits 263 Bibliography 275 Contributors 291 Acknowledgements It all started during a quick lunch at the History Department of the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), Netherlands. A few months after I returned from my fieldwork in East Africa, I talked with my col- league the IIAS Professor Henk Schulte Nordholt about my experi- ences in the field. We discussed how the growing interest in the concept of ‘diaspora’ fostered new ideas and academic ventures in the areas of migration and identity studies. Inspite of this apparent interest, we agreed that many scholars tended to focus on their own subject areas and their own ethnic groups. Therefore, I proposed a rough idea to set up a broad, comparative conference on diaspora. This conference would not only include specialists on the South Asian diaspora, but ex- perts on Chinese and African diaspora as well. The idea was that specialists in the field of the South Asian diasporas would be confronted with ideas and concepts from other regions. In addition, they would present their own findings to fellow specialists. With the support of IIAS, the conference ‘The South Asian Diasporas: The Creation of Unfinished Identities in the Modern World’ was held at the EUR in June 2005. Many – but not all – articles in this book were written as a result of that conference. In line with the original idea, I invited two ‘outsiders’ to share their knowledge and opinions with us. Kim Butler (Africanist at the University of New York) pre- sented a keynote lecture ‘Diaspora Kaleidoscope – Or Colliding Dia- sporas? The Meta Diaspora Concept and the Mini-Diaspora Realities’. Here, she reminded us of the ambivalent relationship between a popu- lar academic concept and day-to-day realities. In fact this ‘ambivalence’ became the centre of the discussion in the two-day conference. Leo Douw (Universiteit van Amsterdam) also shared his knowledge of the Chinese diaspora discourse. I am grateful to them both for their valu- able inputs. I would like to thank the following institutions which provided finan- cial support: IIAS, the Netherlands Foundation for Scientific Research (NWO), The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (KNAW), the Trustfund and the Faculty of History and Arts of the EUR, Furthermore I would like to thank Theresa Oostvogels (EUR), Marloes Rozing (IIAS), Wieke Vink and Gaby van Beek (EUR students) who made fantastic contributions at the organisational level which made the conference run smoothly. Gijsbert Oonk History Department (FHKW) Erasmus University Rotterdam 1 Global Indian Diasporas Exploring Trajectories of Migration and Theory Gijsbert Oonk Introduction There are currently approximately 20,000,000 people of South Asian origin living outside of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, with the major- ity in Africa, the Caribbean, and Oceania.1 Although there are regional variations in their adaptations, in many ways, they display a common ‘Indian’ identity.2 They may want their children to prosper in their adopted countries, but at the same time they may prefer them to adopt Indian family values, marry other Indians, and share their common culture. In other words, many South Asians living overseas tend to re- produce their Indian culture, values, language, and religion as much as possible.3 Moreover, many South Asian migrants are currently trying to re-connect with their homeland, either through modern mass med- ia, the Internet, or personal visits. These re-connections are often seen as romantic rendezvous with the historical past and their ‘original roots’.4 Within, academic ‘Indian diaspora’ literature, the reproduction of culture in an often-hostile environment and the relation to the homeland are key

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