The role of Indiaspora

At this crucial juncture the government must show courage to support its diaspora culturally and intellectually. Hopefully, it will regard them as more than milch-cows for investment and remittance. Beyond money, a bigger battle is waging, that of cultural assertion. The role of the diaspora in this is crucial.

The 21st century began gloomily with demise of socialism. Western strategists, however, prefer to portray the tension between poor and rich nations as less economic and more cultural. Samuel P. Huntington’s West versus Rest paradigm projects the Euro-American white Christian majority as seriously threatened by the once colonised nations. Hence his portraiture of Islam as a consolidated aggressor and that of India as a "lonely Hindu nation" without a strong diasporic support dependent for its survival on American goodwill. But barely two years after his lecture expressing these sentiments at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (February 1998), India has not only demolished the myth of its loneliness, its diaspora has also emerged as a global force in infotech business. Far from a lonely nation, India is being recognised and sought after as a vast repository of skilled labour.

Before Independence the diasporic and expatriate Indians were expected to speak out for the freedom struggle. But in the fifties, they were advised to meekly assimilate themselves in the host societies. The government turned a blind eye to their persecution in Burma, Uganda, Kenya and Fiji. As a result, a whole generation of them ended up adopting a schizophrenic life-style, in which the public space in the adopted land was seen as alien and the private home as stagnantly native. Culture was relegated to the kitchen and the cupboard. The legacy of the closet-culture of the diasporians of the Nehruvian era must now be abandoned to enable the NRIs and POIs practise their life-styles naturally and easily in public spaces.

The concept of nationality has undergone a big change. Now it is less topographic and more emotional. With the emergence of the European Union, nationalism has been redefined not only for the nation states of Europe but even for the people of Asian and African continents. In the very Euro-American societies that developed the concept of nationalism, the construct of ethnicity has come to almost replace it. We have a situation in which borders are defined by the older nationalism, while the social fabric is divided into new `ethnic’ categories. Every nation is now seen as amulti-ethnic conglomerate. With this devaluation of topographic nationhood and the privileging of ethnicity, the new communication technology ismaking the cultural-ethnic bonds so strong that expatriate populations can now live in close emotional proximity to native lands. It is up to the government to harness the emotional links of Indiaspora.

So far, the government policy of relating to the diaspora has not been need-specific. It treats them all alike, mindlessly providing a staple diet of dance, music, films and museum art without reference to the country they live in or the region of India from where they originate. The needs of African Indiasporians are very different from those of East Asian or American Indiasporians. A new policy for relating to the diversity of the diaspora has to be formulated. Nor should everything be left to the Centre as this tends to create generalised solutions that reduce effectiveness. States like Punjab, Kerala, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu need to make special efforts as people from these regions have a major presence abroad. The diasporians themselves have a lot to gain from better educational centres in India for the sake of their own children. Seeing the pitiable condition of universities in Gujarat, I have always wondered why no money has ever been invested in them by the Gujarati billionaire expatriates. The sameapplies to Kerala. The kind of pride that diasporians feel in their regional identities can be made more meaningful if specific projects of cultural involvement are realised.

The movement of the skilled Indians to other lands has barely begun to gather momentum. As the number of educated unemployed Indians continues to rise, the push to move shall mount. So will the pull from post-industrial societies of Europe and America as the working age population is declining locally. All the same, cyber-rush can become as dehumanising as the gold-rush, if protection is not sought in the form of nondiscriminatory and humanitarian immigration laws. One can clearly see a backlash in the offing against immigrants and steps to handle this must be worked out well in advance. In the Gulf region, the treatment meted out to Indians is in contravention of human rights. Custody of passport with the employer, restrictions on communications and family visitors, near inhuman behaviour with women working as house-help are some of the issues that need to be taken up without fear of souring diplomatic ties with the Gulf nations.

The Indiaspora also needs to be convinced that in order to survive as independent people in the adopted lands they need to grow with their heritage not just merely cling to it. Apart from many strategies required for strengthening their security and comfort level, they need to intervene in the educational systems of adopted lands. So far only parallel tracks of cultural visibility such as temples and gurdwaras have been established. But real dialogue with the host inhabitants can occur only if some room is made in the curriculum for Indian philosophies and cultural beliefs. This is going to be a major task that calls for persistent and planned effort.

However, the above plea for establishing Indian heritage must not be taken up as cultural evangelism. On the contrary, it should rest on the idea of a cultural consonance and a policy of give and take for promoting the Indian content in the establishment of genuine global pluralism. It is a historical truth that there has always been a greater common ground between cultures than is usually admitted and, therefore, commonality and not differences are the raison d’etre of all communication and coexistence.

Cyber-rush can become as dehumanising as the gold-rush if protection is not sought in the form of nondiscriminatory and humanitarian immigration laws.

The writer teaches in Delhi University