S HIFTING TRANSNATIONAL BONDING IN INDIAN DIASPORA This volume examines Indian diasporic communities in various countries including the United Kingdom, Trinidad, Portugal, Netherlands, and Fiji, among others, and presents new perspectives on the shifting nature of Indian transnationalism. The book: • Discusses how migrant communities reinforce the diaspora and retain a group identity, while at the same time maintaining a bond with their homelands; • Highlights new tendencies in the configuration of Indian transnationalism, especially cultural entanglements with the host countries and the differentiation of homelands; • Studies forces affecting bonding among these communities such as global and local encounters, glocalisation, as well as economic, political, and cultural changes within the Indian state and the wider Indian diaspora. Featuring a diverse collection of essays rooted in robust fieldwork, this volume will be of great importance for students and researchers of diaspora studies, globalization and transnational migration, cultural studies, minority studies, sociology, political studies, international relations, and South Asian studies. Ruben Gowricharn is Full Professor of Indian diaspora studies at the VU University in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He has published extensively on diasporas, democracy, and the integration of ethnic minorities. He was previously the managing director of a doctoral program for adult migrant students in the Netherlands and Suriname. S HIFTING TRANSNATIONAL BONDING IN INDIAN DIASPORA Edited by Ruben Gowricharn First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Ruben Gowricharn; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Ruben Gowricharn to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 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. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. 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 Names: Gowricharn, Ruben S., 1952– editor. Title: Shifting transnational bonding in Indian diaspora / edited by Ruben Gowricharn. Description: Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020007923 (print) | LCCN 2020007924 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: East Indian diaspora. | East Indians—Foreign countries—Ethnic identity. | Transnationalism. Classification: LCC DS432.5 .S54 2020 (print) | LCC DS432.5 (ebook) | DDC 305.8914/11—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007923 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007924 I SBN: 978-1-138-34684-0 (hbk) I SBN: 978-1-003-05380-4 (ebk) T ypeset in Sabon b y Apex CoVantage, LLC CONTENTS List of contributors vii P reface ix 1 Introduction: shifts in transnational bonding 1 RUBEN GOWRICHARN PART I Global and local encounters 15 2 Re-reading the banyan tree analogy: everyday life and identity of Indian diaspora in Britain 17 DIVYA BALAN 3 Reconfiguring identity in a transnational world: Indo-Trinidadians and the construction of Indianness 36 KAMINI MARAJ GRAHAME AND PETER R. GRAHAME 4 From nationalism to Hindutva: bollywood and the makings of the Hindu diasporic woman 58 ROSHNI SENGUPTA 5 Understanding Indian diaspora and economic development: opportunities and challenges 78 SATYA BHAN YADAV v CONTENTS PART II Glocalisation 95 6 Indo-American women redefining religious practices in the diaspora 97 ANNAPURNA D EVI PANDEY 7 Mother Mary in the Hindu Pantheon among Portuguese Gujarati families 123 RITA CACHADO AND INÊS LOURENÇO 8 The infrastructure of glocalisation 142 RUBEN GOWRICHARN PART III Regional transnationalism 161 9 Baithak gáná ke nác: a case of reverse glocalisation 163 JASWINA ELAHI 10 Fijian-Indian diaspora: emergence, engagement and identity in the transnational world 179 MANORANJAN MOHANTY 11 Idea of homeland/s: Hadramis of Barkas in the Persian Gulf 197 ANUSHYAMA MUKHERJEE Index 211 vi CONTRIBUTORS Divya Balan is Assistant Professor of international studies at FLAME Uni- versity, Maharashtra, India. Her research and teaching interests are in international and internal migration, migration policy, identity politics, as well as Indian diaspora. Rita Cachado is a researcher at CIES-IUL, Portugal, and member of the Board of Portuguese Association of Anthropology (APA). She is the author of “Locating Portuguese Hindus: Transnationality in urban set- tings” (2014). J aswina Elahi works as a senior researcher at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands, with the research group Metropolitan Developments. She is also Lecturer at the faculty of Social Work and Education. K amini Maraj Grahame is Associate Professor of sociology at Pennsyl- vania State University Harrisburg, US. Her research interests include institutional ethnography, immigration, transnationalism, and the Indo- Caribbean diaspora. P eter R. Grahame has taught qualitative research methods, urban sociology, and the sociology of deviance at both Pennsylvania State University Har- risburg and Pennsylvania State University Schuylkill, US. His research interests include ethnographic methods, cosmopolitanism, urban life, and environmental communication. I nês Lourenço is a researcher at CRIA/ISCTE-IUL, Portugal. Her research interests include Indian diasporas and patrimonialization, and Portuguese consumption of Indian cultural commodities. M anoranjan Mohanty is Associate Professor in development studies at the University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji. His research interests include migration and diaspora study. vii CONTRIBUTORS Anushyama Mukherjee is a postdoctoral student at the Centre for Urban Policy and Governance, India. Her research interests broadly revolve around questions of urban spaces, migration, ethnicity and Indian dias- pora. Annapurna Devi Pandey is Cultural Anthropologist at the University of Cali- fornia, Santa Cruz, US. She is the recipient of a senior Fulbright Scholar- ship (2017–2018) and the author of numerous essays on Indian women’s activism, agency, entrepreneurship, and Indian diaspora. Roshni Sengupta is Visiting Professor at the Institute of Middle and Far East Studies, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. She works primarily on culture and politics in South Asia, media, and film studies. Satya Bhan Yadav is Associate Professor and Research Supervisor with PG Department of Economics, BSR GAC Matsya University, Alwar, India. viii PREFACE The literature on the Indian diaspora is too vast to label it as burgeoning. Indeed, its volume is developing at increasing speed, making it difficult to keep pace. Given that the Indian diaspora is highly ramified, comprising migrants on all continents who left India at different points in time, it is highly segmented. However, despite such heterogeneity, the existing liter- ature focuses predominantly on postcolonial migration from India to the Anglophone Western world. This segment mostly represents first-generation Indian migrants who visit India for family purposes rather than indulging in the homeland. They are involved in Indian domestic and foreign politics, they are bearers of Indian nationalism, and they are most familiar with Indian society. Their ties with India differ from those of, for example, descendants of indentured labourers to plantation colonies in the Caribbean or traders and labourers in Africa or the Pacific. For a long time the prevalent perspective regarding the Indian diaspora (and one may say most diasporas) was rather static, representing the homeland as a centre around which satellite overseas communities revolve. Although the literature acknowledges precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial migrations, this classification appeared to be too broad and too fixed. Indeed, different communities and their relations with their ancestral and parental homelands as well the present homeland itself have changed in recent decades. In part this is due to the predominance of the Anglo-Indian perspective, which is largely restricted to postcolonial migration. Partly this also has to do with the migration of diaspora Indians to other societies, from the Caribbean to Europe. As a result multiple homelands have emerged: ancestral, parental, and personal. These shifts have largely gone unnoticed, as literature on the Indian diaspora is dominated by the Anglo-Indian perspective. Moreover, every segment appears to have a different shift that, taken together, highlight the emergence of a new ensemble called the Indian diaspora with changing types of bonding. Acknowledgement of these changes inspired an international conference on the Indian diaspora in The Hague in October 2017. The conference was organised by the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (specifically the Lalla Rookh ix