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Mainstream, Vol 63 No 5,February 1, 2025

The Diasporic Dilemma | Bhavuk and Prashansa Upadhyay

Saturday 1 February 2025

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Since 2003, the 9th of January each year is celebrated as Pravasi Bhartiya Divas or Non-Resident Indians Day. The day marks the return of the single most influential Indian emigrant, Mahatma Gandhi, from South Africa on this day in 1915. The growth in influence of the Indian diaspora is visible by such a celebration because the Indian diaspora has been there since colonial times but it was recently that the need to celebrate this diaspora was felt by the Indian government. This also offers an opportunity to closely look at the diaspora’s making and evolution through the ages. One fact that we shall bear in mind is that the South Asian diaspora is largely a result of British imperialism and the policies applied to further it. However, there has been a transformation in the pattern and behaviour of migration among this diaspora after 1947, speeding up in the recent past. These are the two aspects we shall focus upon.

Formation of The South Asian Diaspora

Ever since the advent of Colonial rule in India, the Colonial rulers were fascinated with the classification and categorization of the indigenous people. This led to the formation of some bewildering policies on the part of the British which were best manifested in their administrative policies. India had always had roving bands performing multiple duties in order to earn their livelihood and sustain the intermittent life between villages and towns. With the arrival of the British, these bands or itinerant groups were considered as a threat and soon branded as criminal tribes. Be it the Banjaras or the Thugs, all of them were labelled as criminal tribes. We must know that the British at that time were not only ruling India but had huge imperial designs world over. Thus, “the flow of convict labour, run by the government, was soon integrated with the privately-controlled trade in indentured labourers to the Caribbean and the American colonies. This policy was also applied to India.”(Tharoor, 2016, pp.190-191)

Therefore, we find that migration during the Colonial era was largely of three types:

Largely two types of inhabitants, one criminalised under British law and second, those escaping the consequences of famine and evading death were forced to migrate to the towns. These towns opened new arenas (often involuntarily) for migration to other countries. This was because the migrants largely unlettered, were made to thump their thumb impressions on a girmit (an agreement or contract and hence these migrants are still known by the Hindi term girmitiyas). Based on the destination, this migration can further be subdivided into two categories

a) the earliest migration took place in the South-East countries, where the labour of these migrants (indentured labourers) helped the British further colonize other parts. An example is that of the Indian convicts working as low-cost labourers in public projects, who were vital to Penang’s successful colonization.(Tharoor, 2016, p.191) This makes it vivid that migrants from India were not only influencing the non-formal colonies, as argued by Gallagher and Robinson in their “Imperialism of Free Trade” but were also buttressing the process of formal annexation.

So essential were the indentured labourers for the colonising mission that between 1825-1872, Indian convicts made up the bulk of the labour force for all public works in Singapore.(Tharoor,2016, p.191). It was not just for the new areas that this Indian population of migrants was helpful, but it also assisted in covering up the blunders which the colonizers had committed in India. A point in case is that of Mahatma Gandhi who organised collections for Indian famine from 1897-1900 in South Africa.

The situation in India was so deplorable that to quote William Digby, ‘whereas wars engulfed the lives of 5 million between 1793-1900 almost a staggering 19 million had died in India alone due to famines between a mere 10 year period between 1891-1900.’ The migration of Indians to Ceylon, Malaya, Burma and the “King Sugar colonies”(coined by Brij V. Lal, 2013, p.79) of South Africa and the Caribbean by 1901 as estimated by Joya Chatterjee was 1.37 million. (Chaterjee, 2024,p.297)

b) As it became clear to the British that the representative government would gradually be established in India, they tried to find more and more allies with influence. This resulted in their bestowing special favours upon the agriculture classes. Concomitant with this was the Punjab Alienation of Land Act, 1900 which restricted the sale of land from agriculture classes to the non-agricultural classes. Major beneficiaries of this Act of 1900 were the large Muslim landlords of Western and South-Western Punjab.(Mridula Mukherjee, 2005, p.48, footnote no.6). Those who were denied land under the Act, largely Sikhs, moved to US and Canada and facing discrimination even there, brewed resistance. This connection of the Land Alienation Act to the Ghadar Movement has been best explained by Sumit Sarkar. (Sarkar, 1983). This new stream of migrants also reached a new place i.e. Australia. The reason for this was the relative freedom it offered. The pull of better avenues of livelihood drove even those from the landed class to these places. Mridula Mukherjee opines that those of the landed class who migrated helped secure the land further back home. She states that the share of land of the families with no migrants dropped from 12% to 10% after the Land Alienation Act was implemented. The families with overseas migrants were the first ones to purchase land in adjacent villages and to build a pucca house, which was a symbol of prestige. (Mridula Mukherjee, 2005, p.149)

c) Those free will migrants who were affluent enough to chose their destination and time period, largely the local elites whose main purpose of migration remained education and occupation.

The Plight of Migrants

While the pace of migrants was kept up by the increase in global production of sugar which increased from 300,000 tons in 1790 to 10 million tons in 1914, the problems faced by then were aplenty as well. Women in particular remained the worst sufferers having to face the threat of abduction or marrying someone based only upon the whims and fancies of the manager. This is borne out by Maharani’s example from Trinidad.(Carter and Torabull, 2002, p.43) No recognition of marriages, sometimes acceptance only as per Christian rites as seen in South Africa, failure to punish abductors of women and lack of security on all fronts were some of the all-pervading issues faced by the migrants. A group of Telugu returnees from Mauritius severely criticised this lack of safety. Add to it the poll tax at certain places, sometimes as high as £3(as in South Africa).

The dungeons they were forced to live in were scornful in almost all the parts they migrated to and they were always hand to mouth. Travelling vehicles provided such a shrunk space and so exhausting a journey to them that reading about it even in the open air would make one feel cramped and exasperated. Clare Anderson reports that during a single year from 1856-57, en route from Kolkata to Trinidad, 12.3% of all males, 18.5% of all females, 28% of the boys and 36% of the girls among the indentured labourers perished on the transport ships.

Their problems were not only restricted to the political and economic front but even seeped to the cultural arena. Among the events of cultural solidarity of the migrants was the observance of Muharram which they had peculiarly started calling Hosay. It was equally observed by Hindus and Muslims(both Shias and Sunnis) from Natal to Fiji and Mauritius to the Caribbean. There was a standoff between the migrants and the government authorities over the observance of Hosay in 1884. In the protests that ensued, even the Hindus and Sunnis paid down their lives for their right to observe the Hosay. Giving an economic angle to it Prabhu P. Mohapatra opines that sugar prices had begun to fall and the planters were adamant to squeeze out as much labour as possible. This he defines as the backdrop to the 1884 Hosay rights.

When Gokhale and Gandhi raised the issue of indentured labour in 1910s and the prices of sugar started going downhill, indentured labour was abolished in Mauritius and Malaya and with Gandhi’s Satyagrah even Natal did away with it. The year 1917 saw the complete termination of indentured labour. Thereafter, World wars took the population away especially to Burma during the second world war.

The Evolving Diaspora

We shall now shift to the changing pattern of migration which emerged after India’s independence. Now migration had two aspects:

1 Those migrants already there in countries like UK, US, Australia etc looked to get their citizenship. Initially indentured labourers, these people now wanted to live in the country of their migration and avail the liberty on offer.

2 For better opportunity in terms of education and job which has been termed as “brain drain” by David Washbrook. (Chatterjee and Washbrook, 2013)

The difference was that now the South Indian diaspora was no more South Asian but rather a fractured Indian, Pakistani and later Bangladeshi diaspora. Communities had been trying to go abroad also to escape torturous ordeals back home because the environment was not very assuring.

While at one time, they had together fought for the observance of Hosay, now each community had its own festivals which it valued and cherished more than the other community’s event.

Feulling Communalism Through Nationalism

With the coming of diplomas, another avenue for migration occurred in Arab countries largely to earn petro-dollar. While from their earning they sent remittances back home, especially to Kerala, their developed in them a quest for upward mobilisation of their status. This coupled with a communitarian view further enhanced competitive communalism back home. While the domes of Mosques began sprawling up in pure marble and sometimes even glazed with gold, Hindus began to protest for the creation of a Ram Mandir. NRIs began to influence the internal politics of the country and were particularly prominent in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement sending Ram Shelans or bricks inscribed with Jai Shri Ram from the US by airmail. This flaunting of affluence by Petro-dollars has lit the communal fire. (Mohammad Sajjad, Aligarh Movement In Our Times,2022) We must know that being a product of imperialism, the Diaspora imbibes similar qualities even after independence.

Arvind Narayan Das in his essay “The Long Distance-Nationalism” brings out the reasons for this newfound love towards Hindu-ness and Indian-ness which is reflected in the attitudes of a segment of the non-resident Indians (NRIs), a section of the well- off, NRIs has extended support to the VHP in a curious assertion of post-nationalist ethnic identity. “While location is of little or no significance for them and, as such, they are convinced regarding the "end of geography drawn to primordialist ties of religion. This is not only an articulation of the search for "roots" among the uprooted but also a response to alienation in their present life. In any event, an element of this assertion is a reflection of the phenomenon that has been described as "long-distance nationalism".”

He clarifies that we must note that there are many varieties of NRIs or people of Indian origin. “In addition to the "new" migrants from India who constitute the abundantly visible NRIs in Europe and America, there are also the older emigrants in Surinam, Mauritius, Fiji and South Africa for whom migration was not voluntary. Much of the "Indian" population of these countries is descended from people who were taken there as indentured labourers and their severance of organic linkages with the "motherland" was forced. However, in recent years, there has once again been a reassertion of "Indian-ness.”

This argument is as applicable to Muslims as to Hindus and is much more enhanced in the case of AMU alumni abroad. To further accentuate this argument let us take the case of a character Shaukat, from Namita Singh’s novel Ladies Club (2011). An account of his stay in the US is as follows- Now, every week Shaukat used to visit the Institute for Islamic Education and started growing a beard. He made Azra, his wife as well as Gazala, his daughter to wear a Hijab and also changed Ghazala’s School as she now went to a school run by the Society for Islamic Movement. Instead of trying to suggest measures for improvement and more liberalized education back at AMU, he idealized AMU turning a blind- eye to its flaws. The case should ideally be the reverse as the liberalism and freedom that they enjoy abroad should force them to bring about a similar outlook in their alma mater as well. As he came to know that the Vice Chancellor was visiting America, he invited him to Boston through the Old Boys association and Sir Syed Academy of America. He served him quite lavishly and 6 months later when the selection committee sat for selection, all these things paid off and Shaukat Ali rejoined AMU.

Conclusion

Our diaspora which is now very influential must also realise its responsibility and see what it has come to. It must remedy itself to better contribute to the nation’s holistic progress and not just bask in the glory of a “long-distance nationalism.”

(Authors: Bhavuk and Prashansa Upadhyay (PhD Candidates at The Department of History, AMU))

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