City of Strangers: The Transnational Indian Community in Manama, Bahrain Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Gardner, Andrew M. Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 02/10/2021 14:12:59 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/195849 CITY OF STRANGERS: THE TRANSNATIONAL INDIAN COMMUNITY IN MANAMA, BAHRAIN By Andrew Michael Gardner ____________________________ Copyright © Andrew Michael Gardner 2005 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2 0 0 5 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Andrew M. Gardner entitled City of Strangers: The Transnational Indian Community in Manama, Bahrain and recommended that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy __________________________________________________ Date: ______________ Linda Green __________________________________________________ Date: ______________ Tim Finan __________________________________________________ Date: ______________ Mark Nichter __________________________________________________ Date: ______________ Michael Bonine Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. __________________________________________________ Date: ______________ Dissertation Director: Linda Green 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Andrew M. Gardner 4 Acknowledgements In the anthropological parlance, “key informants” are those individuals native to the communities we study who emerge as integral to the multifaceted enquiry that comprises fieldwork. While I certainly found many individuals willing to share their time and thoughts with me, I hesitate to pull these relationships into the nomenclature of “informant,” a title that somehow seems at once cold, formal, and oddly traitorous. There were many individuals whose contributions were essential to the production of this document, but those who proved the most key were first my friends, and our afternoons or evenings spent drinking coffee, carousing through the nightlife of Bahrain, eating dinner, walking along the corniche, or smoking sheesha yielded a lively intellectual atmosphere that made my time on the island all the more enjoyable. With that caveat in mind, I would foremost like to thank S. Kumar for taking me under his wing. A pharmacist by training, S. was born with a seemingly boundless desire to make the world a better place, a trait readily apparent in his unyielding penchant for service to those less fortunate than him. I would also like to thank Ashish Gorde and Dhafi al-Mannai, both of whom helped me move beyond the naiveté I brought to the field. N. Arora, a student at the Indian School, served as my field assistant on occasion as well. Add to this list the names of the many others that helped me along the way: Dr. R. K. Hebsur, Pragati, Mohammed, Earsil, Veena, Joel, Timothy, all my fellow Toastmasters and Lions, Aisha, the Indian Ladies Association, Suresh, Vani, and the students in the 2003 ILA English course I taught. Shortly after arriving on the island I met with Dr. Sharon Nagy, a cultural anthropologist interested in many of the same issues that brought me to the island. What might have ended up being a difficult relationship—two ethnographers working on the same topic on a small island— ended up just the opposite: Dr. Nagy’s mentorship, guidance, and friendship proved invaluable to me. Meanwhile, Dr. Linda Green, my primary advisor, found time for a steady stream of correspondence that, I suppose, might be called transnational mentorship, as did Dr. Michael Bonine. Their continuing patience, sage advice, and occasional critique have been invaluable to me. There are many others to add to this list: Melissa McCormick, for guiding me to anthropology; Tim Finan, for arranging that wonderful first trip to the Arabian Peninsula; Tom McGuire, for teaching me to think more carefully; to Don Stull, for helping me improve my writing; and to Ana Alonso, for providing the best reading list of my graduate coursework. Particular thanks go to Katherine Holmsen, Aomar Boum and Rylan Higgins, all fellow dissertators whose many close readings of these chapters proved invaluable. The production of this dissertation would not have been possible without institutional and financial support from a variety of sources. Special thanks go to the Fulbright Organization and, in particular, to the staff of the Cultural Affairs Office at the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain. Equally important is the Bahrain Training Institute, who, in conjunction with the Fulbright Program, arranged to sponsor my research. I also received financial assistance from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Upon return to the United States, I depended upon support from the Raymond Thompson Fund and the Haury Dissertation Fellowship. Finally, I’d like to thank my wife, Kristin Giordano, for all her support during the three years of research and preparation behind this dissertation, and for joining me in the field. Her perspectives on life as a woman in Bahrain have leaked into this document, and her photographs from the island are the better of those that accompany this text. 5 This dissertation is dedicated to all the men and women who journey across the Indian Ocean to the wealthy states of the Gulf in the hope of a better future for themselves and the families they have left behind. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS/TABLES ................................................................ 10 ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... 11 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION ........................................................... 13 I. Introduction ................................................................................................... 13 II. Anthropology and People on the Move ......................................................... 17 III. Anthropological Silence and the Gulf ......................................................... 21 IV. Conducting Research in the Gulf ................................................................ 29 V. Language and Fieldwork in Bahrain ............................................................. 32 VI. Methods ........................................................................................................ 37 VII. Transnationalism and the State ................................................................... 44 VIII. Organization of the Dissertation ................................................................ 52 CHAPTER TWO HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ....................................... 60 I. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 60 II. Early History .................................................................................................. 62 III. Pearls in the Global Ecumene ....................................................................... 66 IV. The Arrival of British Colonialism ............................................................... 72 V. Petroleum and the Global Political Economy ................................................ 76 VI. A Modern State? ........................................................................................... 82 VII. Bahrain in a Regional Context .................................................................... 89 VIII. Conclusion .................................................................................................. 96 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS -- Continued CHAPTER THREE TRANSNATIONAL LIVELIHOODS, TRANSNATIONAL LIVES: THE INDIAN UNDERCLASS .................. 99 I. Arriving in Bahrain .......................................................................................... 99 II. One Transnational Life ................................................................................... 105 III. The Chain of Migration from India to the Gulf ............................................ 108 IV. Securing Employment in the Gulf ................................................................ 113 V. Transmigrants and the Kafala System ............................................................ 119 VI. The Economics of Transnational Life in Bahrain ......................................... 125 VII. Life in