Indian Diaspora and Global Organizations: Communities and ConTested Boundaries
Bhat, Chandrashekhar (2018): Indian Diaspora and Global Organizations: Communities and Con tested Boundaries. In: Elfriede Hermann and Antonie Fuhse (eds.): India Beyond India: Dilemmas of Belonging. Göttingen: Göttingen University Press (Göttingen Series in Social and Cultural Anthropology, 12), pp. 27–48. Doi: 10.17875/gup2020-1262 2 Indian Diaspora and Global Organizations: Communities and Contested Boundaries Chandrashekhar Bhat Introduction This chapter focuses on the emergence of Indian diaspora organizations operating at the global level to articulate their socio-cultural, economic and political interests. The Indian diaspora comprises communities no less diversified than those found in the land of origin, often reflecting these diversities through a wide variety of ethnic minority associations. Unlike the ethnic associations of Indian immigrants, which are formed specifically to address their immediate concerns in the context of adjust- ment and integration into the ‘host society,’ the diaspora organizations are essentially transnational, uniting global collectives based on national, subnational, linguistic, caste or religious identities. These diversities are further compounded on a tempo- ral plane, differentiating the descendants of early colonial indentured immigrants (PIO, i.e. the Persons of Indian Origin diaspora) from later immigrants who left after India’s Independence (NRI, i.e. the Non-Resident Indian diaspora). The dynamics of these diversities carry implications for the grouping and regrouping of Indian diaspora communities: all of them compete and contend in their efforts to form global organizations. This chapter explores the formation of pan-Indian Global Organizations of Peo- ple of Indian Origin (GOPIO) and the regional / linguistic organizations formed, for example, by the Telugu, Gujarati and Punjabi communities.
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