Showing papers in "South Asian Diaspora in 2009"

Revisiting the UK Muslim diasporic public sphere at a time of terror: from local (benign) invisible spaces to seditious conspiratorial spaces and the ‘failure of multiculturalism’ discourse

Abstract: Public exposes of hidden spaces where diasporic Muslims allegedly enunciate extreme anti-Western rhetoric or plot sedition highlight an ironic shift from a time, analyzed in my earlier work, when the Pakistani diasporic public sphere in Britain was invisible and local while nevertheless being regarded as relatively benign: a space of expressive rhetoric, ceremonial celebration and local power struggles. Suicide bombings on the London underground and revelations of aborted conspiracies have led to a national media debate in which Muslim “community ” leaders for the first time have come to be active participants. They respond to accusations by politicians and journalists that multicultural tolerance has “failed” in Britain, and that national Muslim organizations are the prime cause of this alleged failure. Addressing this “failure of multiculturalism” discourse, the chapter questions, first, whether talk of multiculturalism in the UK is really about “culture” at all. Second, it explores why Muslim integration into Britain—the so-called success or failure of multiculturalism—has come to be “tested” by Muslim national leaders’ willingness to attend Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations. The public dialogue reflecting on these issues in the mainstream and ethnic press, the chapter proposes, highlights a signal development in the history of the UK Muslim diasporic public sphere: from being hidden and local to being highly visible and national, responsive to British politicians, investigative journalists and the wider British public.

American Karma: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Indian Diaspora

Abstract: by Sunil Bhatia, New York, New York University Press, 2007, 270 pp., US$23.00 (paperback), ISBN 9780814799581 Sunil Bhatia’s study of middle‐class, professional Indian immigrants in the USA is a la...

The dynamics of translocal and transjurisdictional networks: a diasporic perspective

Abstract: Diasporic initiatives, implemented ‘from below’ no less than ‘from above’, have played a key role in 500 years of globalisation and have made significant contribution to swings in the global balance of power and wealth. The diasporic networks which non‐European migrants have utilised to establish themselves in the global North are far from novel, although their transgressive success has begun to alarm the indigenes of Euro‐America. In a last‐ditch effort to sustain the established global order, Northern jurisdictions are currently seeking to criminalise the ‘informal’ dimensions of the interlopers’ transjurisdictional networks, even though their function and purpose is strikingly similar to those deployed within contemporary multinational corporations.

Diasporic subjectivity as an ethical position

Abstract: The paper highlights some of the ways in which diasporas challenge the dominant narratives of belonging that give primacy to the bounded community of nation-states. It argues for a critical appropriation of diasporic subjectivity as an ethical position that reveals the contested and constructed nature of culture. This position requires analytical frameworks that recognise power relations behind cultural claims and allow us to appreciate the silenced and marginalised voices subsumed under the categories of diaspora and culture.

Another world of experience? Transnational contexts and the experiences of South Asian Americans

Abstract: Despite discussions about freely circulating people, ideas, media images, money, technology in a flat world in the popular media, new political, economic, and technological formations continue to construct restrictive social hierarchies that disproportionately affect socially marked groups. This paper focuses on South Asian Americans to systematically examine how these forces have created a transnational context that works through and across multiple nations to shape the lives of diasporic groups today. Drawing on a meta analysis of three previous studies, the paper examines three dimensions of this transnational context: the role of global security blocs, companies that market cultures as products, and the World Wide Web as a social space. It shows how ideologies, institutions, and interactions in coalescing real and virtual transnational spaces adds another layer of experience that, in turn, intersects with the multi‐layered diasporic experiences extant within nations.

Scrutinising the past: A review of socio‐literary narratives of the East African Asian diasporic experience

Abstract: This paper offers a socio‐literary investigation of the East African Asian diasporic experience. To this end, it closely examines selected texts that offer insights into the complicated socio‐cultural relationships at the interstices of the colonial histories of the Indian subcontinent, Africa and Europe. It also looks at how gendered participation is articulated from within the larger body of a collective history. Finally, the paper reviews steps taken by contemporary Asian‐Africans to take stock of their shared past, as a part of larger political project for the recognition of a hitherto minoritised group.

The first and only crossing: Indian indentured servitude on Danish St. Croix, 1863–1868

Abstract: The following article examines the first and only ship load of indentured Indians to the Danish West Indian island of St. Croix between 1863 and 1868. The article shows why Indians were recruited, how they were shipped and documents their Caribbean indentured and post‐indentured plantation experience. The argument is that although indentured Indians were one segment of the post‐emancipation Virgin Islands labour force, their entrance into St. Croix demonstrates the Danish government’s desire and confidence to rely on labour from India to resolve the labour shortage. However, the abuse of Indians led to the collapse of the indenture system on St. Croix. Unlike in the British, Dutch and French Caribbean, Indian indenture was never resumed on Danish St. Croix.

Homogenisation and fragmentation, inclusivism and exclusivism in the development of Hinduism in Singapore

Abstract: Even as scholars question the efficacy of the term Hinduism to denote a single world religion, there is widespread acknowledgement that the label Hindu and Hinduism hold considerable resonance in the diaspora Alongside identification with these categories, scholars have provided evidence of the advance of a ‘homogenised Hinduism’, which has underplayed differences between groups Through a study of the historical development of Hinduism in Singapore, this article posits that evolving tensions between exclusive and inclusive community structures have had reverberations that problematise the notion of a simplistic linear move from plurality to homogenisation In addition to differences in region, caste and sect, at various points in time this process has been punctuated by the influence of socio‐religious and political currents from the subcontinent In recent decades the advent of new transnational Hindu‐oriented religious movements and the arrival of migrant professionals, have reconfigured earlier patte

South Asian Christian Diaspora: Invisible Diaspora in Europe and North America

Abstract: One of the strengths of the book is its comparative discussion of the experiences of other non-white immigrants who do not possess the same forms of cultural capital (e.g. Latinos) and of South Asian migrants in a different national context (e.g. Britain). Most of all, I think the book makes a significant contribution to work on the South Asian diaspora and to studies of immigration, class and identity at large because of its sensitive but also critical analysis of the contradictions, ambiguities and limitations of race politics of a class of Indian migrants who have been held up as model citizen– subjects, and whose stories reveal the seductiveness as well as limitations of the American Dream.

The making of Kashmiri identity

Abstract: Much attention has been paid to the way in which national identities have been articulated as part of major political projects. Most writings on nationalism fall within the primordialist or constructionist camps. In this paper I will show how primordialism and constructionism work in Kashmiri nationalism. I will examine this by displaying the various means by which the notion of Kashmiriyat has been articulated, disseminated and maintained among the Kashmiri population in a de‐territoralised space.

Reflexivity and the diaspora: Indian women in post‐indenture Caribbean, Fiji, Mauritius and South Africa

Abstract: “This chapter tries to compare women’s agency in four post-indenture Indian communities. The data is contradictory in the sense that there is general exploitation including, and especially, that of Indian women as well as sterling contributions to cultural life and stability by the same women. I argue that the adaptive persistence of the Indian identity during the transition can be postulated on the basis: (1) that the process of Indian ‘creolisation’ was largely in terms of an adapting core Indian culture, (2) that in the immense work of cultural persistence, reproduction and ‘creolised’ change the contribution of women deserves to be highlighted, and (3) that the reflexivity of the diaspora-based scholars does not talk solely of exploitation but of challenge, response and innovations in their own communities. This is in contrast to the depiction of anomie in the works of Anglo-American scholars, ironically enough precisely those who frame their findings almost wholly in the exploitative nexus of colonialism and imperialism.”

Morality and the imagination – mythopoetics of gender and culture in the Caribbean: the trilogy

Abstract: Positioning an East Indian ethnicity as central to its argument, and using the multidisciplinary lens of art critique, literary criticism, and feminist theory, this paper proposes a politics of inclusion as a defining narrative in Caribbean subjectivity to heal the wounds of colonisation evidenced by racialised exclusions, competing victimhoods, and anger. It suggests that such traumas have limited the aesthetic expression of creativity through a ‘divided sense of humanity’. The paper develops the idea of the cross‐cultural imaginary in Trinidad in particular as it explores questions of (self) representation, gender, culture, sexuality, and race within and across the Caribbean in the search for a Caribbean centered mythopoetics of being. The paper argues in favour of a poetics of the transcendent found in art and literature as a more integral way of ‘imagining’ the Caribbean beyond reductive binaries such as tradition/modernity; Europe/Africa; Africa/Asia; male/female; European orientalism and cultural na...