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Transnational South Asians: The Making
of a Neo-Diaspora
Originating from a word for the scattering of rice grains, diaspora refers to the scattered people of a nation. Originally, the word was used to refer to the Jews, since the Jews, wherever they were, considered themselves to be one people, not integrated with the local society but seeking identification with a lost shared past. The emergence of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century and the horrific results of anti-Semitism in the 20th century made the use of diaspora rather common for all such migrant groups. Considering that South Asian states are currently so hostile to each other, it is interesting to see the academics creating a South Asian diaspora considering the people of South Asia as if they were one. Something of this struck Mahatma Gandhi during his visit to South Africa. Indians in that colony preferred to identify themselves with their religions while the white colonisers forced upon them the singular identity of being ‘Indian coolies’. Gandhi persuaded the Indians that if they hoped to get any justice at the hands of the governments in South Africa, they would have to fight together as Indians and stop making a public fuss with their other identities. Perhaps the identification of a South Asian diaspora, it is hoped by some, would result in the creation of a separate South Asian identity in their host countries? The studies in the present volume come from specialists in sociology, anthropology, literature, religion, media and cultural studies. Taking their cues from a diverse set of masters/philosophers like Mary Douglas, Jacques Derrida, Karl Polanyi, Edward Said, these essayists bravely go into a field without ever defining what it is. The desire to create new academic words without meaning makes them create a word ‘neo-diaspora’ which, apart from the title, gets used in the entire book only a few times. Without referring to any hard information about who these groups are, how numerous, with how much income, how they are located in the economy and society of their respective host countries, these studies hope to, in the words of one of the editors, bring to fore the “problem of naturalising and indigenising non-white populations brought primarily to serve as a labour source”. Even while talking of a South Asian diaspora, some essentially focus on specific national groups. So there is a study of Sri Lankan Tamils, one of the Sinhaleses moving into Australia, another on Malyali migrants, and two on Muslims from India and Pakistan. It is the studies that deal with the information technology coolies in the US, with gay culture among South Asians, and with the pleasure industry—both above ground and underground—that a distinct South Asian identity, transcending South Asian political boundaries, gets mentioned. In the UK, the South Asians get underlined because of the economic resurgence they have been showing. Their movement from being working class to middle and upper classes is one of the more widely talked of things in the UK. As one goes through these studies, one gets the impression that one of the more lasting problems within the South Asian diaspora concerns its identification. Those who have succeeded prefer to integrate; those who have not succeeded enough hope to do so even while building up a separate culture for themselves much as is done by groups that are marginal to the mainstream. The criteria for success: an ability to merge with the host society. Then there are the academics, such as those who have contributed to this study, who try to make a fetish of studying the migrant in the hope of identifying something distinct from the mainstreams culture of the their host societies. As can be expected from migrants who had first gone to sell their labour to these societies, much notice is taken in the essays in this volume of the commodification of labour, how the labour market is manipulated in the host society to the disadvantage of the worker. And how, within them the doubly disadvantaged, like the “dougla”, the descendants of Indo-Africans in the Caribbeans suffer from
marginalisation.
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THE twelve essays in this book add to the growing literature on the South Asian diaspora. But unlike the studies on the diasporic Sikhs, Gujaratis and Sri Lankans, they are quite wishy-washy. 