10 Tracing Movements and Claiming Spaces: Articulation of Diaspora

Mr. Subrata Kumar Das

About the Chapter : This module includes two sections. While the first section traces the dispersions/movements of Indians in foreign countries, the second one depicts the articulation of these Indian diasporic people from/in foreign countries in favour of/against their home country India and host countries’ cultural ethos.

The modem Indian diaspora – the huge migration from the subcontinent that began in the mid-nineteenth century – is not merely one of the most important demographic dislocations of modem times: it now represents an important force in world culture.

Amitav Ghosh in “The Diaspora in Indian Culture” (73).

Introduction:

We find regional and international migrations in world civilisation. We might trace human mobility back to the beginning of human society. In world history, we find the dispersion of many countries’ peoples all over the world, voluntarily or involuntarily, over times for many reasons-notable being for better economic prospect. In academic discourse we use the stable term “diaspora” for these dispersed people. We would trace the origin of the word “Diaspora” from the Jewish source. The term “Diaspora’ is derived from the Greek word dia, meaning “between, though, across”, and speiro, meaning “to sow the seeds”. This suggests, on the one hand, the idea of dispersion and on the other that of stasis and stability sowing seed, suggesting new life and new roots. Initially applied to refer to the dispersal of Jews outside Israel, the term diaspora as per the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary now applies to “the movement of people from any nation or group away from their own country” (Hornby, 347). A distinction is often made between the two, i.e., Diaspora with “D” in the upper case and diaspora with “d” in the lower case: the former stands for dislocation of Jews and the latter stands for cross-cultural displacement in a very general sense. It was first used by the Greeks to refer to the movements of the Jews away from their homeland Israel. So ‘diaspora’ traditionally referred to a very specific situation: the exile of the Jews from the ‘Holy Land’ and their dispersal around the world during the 8th century BCE. Today the term is applied to all ethnic and racial groups living in alien lands. Other diasporic people include African and Armenian victim diasporas, Indian indentured labour diasporas, Chinese and Lebanese trade and business diasporas, deterritorialised diasporas like black Caribbean, and other types.

Tracing Dispersions/Movements of Indians

This section attempts to trace the dispersion of Indians in different countries in different phases over times. In academic discourse we generally observe that Indian migrants’ mobility was seen from the mid-19th century after the abolition of slavery system that started in 1834 in the British colonies. In terms of sheer numbers, Indians make the third largest group, next only to the British and the Chinese. Nearly 28 million Indians settled among  more than 120 countries. There are three phases of Indian migration evidence from the literatures on Indian diaspora. These are as follows: 1. Pre-colonial migration to the Southest Asian countries, 2. Colonial migration (Indian Indentured labour) that began in the 1830s to the British, French and Dutch colonies and 3. Post-colonial migration to the industrially developed First World countries, and the Persian Gulf countries.

Pre-colonial Migration:

Since pre-colonial time, Indians migrated to the Southeast Asian countries for the purpose of trade and the propagation of religion. As far as the historical and archival data are concerned, Indian emigation goes back to the first century AD when Indian princes, priests, poets and artisans migrated to countries like Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore and other countries. The early emigration owed its origins to the Buddhist missionaries, when the Hindu kingdoms of mediaeval Southest Asia attracted labour and craftsmen from India during the 16th century. The trade contacts slowly developed and thereby small colonies established themselves in East Africa and Southeast Asia. It is observed that merchants from Gujarat, Bengal and Tamil Nadu settled down in the great port cities like Malacca, Aches, Ternate and Tidor during this period. These Indians gradually assimilated with the local people.

Colonial Migration:

New plantations and industrial and commercial ventures in European colonies created the need for large supplies of labour, and with the abolition of slavery system in the British, French and Dutch colonies in 1834, 1846 and 1873 respectively, there were severe shortage of labour to work in sugar, tea, coffee, cocoa and rubber plantations in the colonies. The reasons why Indians agreed to emigrate in these phases are several. According to Ajaya Kumar Sahoo:

“The first was poor condition that prevailed at that time in India because of the social oppression, shrinking of cottage industry, periodic famine resulting in extreme poverty and unemployment. The West, on the other hand, was getting affluent because of industrial development. Second, all colonial masters found Indians skilful, hard-working and useful, as a result of which the British, the French, the Dutch, and the Portuguese all took Indian skilled labour for development of plantations and agricultural economics of their territories.”

Thus Indians were transported to many Caribbean, Asia Pacific, South American and Indian Ocean countries in the form of “Indenture Labour”. “Indentured Labour” is described as “…a contract by which the immigrant was bound to work for a given employer for a three to five year term, performing the task assigned to him for a specified wage” (Jain, 1993: 30). There were some phases of the transportation of these indentured Indians to such countries. So after the abolition of slavery system throughout most of the British Empire by 1934, in the first phase we find transportation of Indian labourers to Mauritius. By 1838, 25,000 Indian labourers       had                  been                  shipped                  to                  Mauritius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_indenture_system).

There were reports of abuses of this indenture system. So, on 29 May 1839, overseas manual labour was prohibited and any person effecting such emigration was liable to a 200 Rupee fine or three months in jail. Still this system was illegally continued to some extent.

As the planters in Mauritius and the Caribbean worked hard to overturn the ban, the British Company finally capitulated under intense pressure from planters and their supporters. On 2 December 1842, the Indian Government again permitted emigration from Calcutta, Bombay and Madras to Mauritius. But certain regulations were formed. There were penalties for abuse of the system. Return passage had to be provided to the indenture labourers at any time after five years when claimed. During 1843, 30,218 male and 4,307 female indentured immigrants entered Mauritius. The first ship from Madras arrived in Mauritius on 21 April 1843 .

In the end of 1844, the British Indian Government legalised emigration to Jamaica, Trinidad and Demerara (Guyana). The first ship the Whitby, sailed from port Calcutta for British Guiana on 13 January 1838, arrived in Berbice on 5 May 1838. Transportation of Indians to the Caribbean countries stopped in 1848 due to problems in the sugar industry.  But it is again resumed to Demerara and Trinidad in 1851 and Jamaica in 1860.

Recruitment of Indian labourers to the French sugar colonies continued through the French ports in India without knowledge of the British authorities. By 1856 the number of Indian labourers in French colony Réunion is estimated to have reached 37,694. It was not until 25 July 1860 that France was officially permitted by the British authorities to recruit labour for Reunion at a rate of 6,000 annually (ibid.). This was extended on 1 July 1861 with permission to import ‘free’ labourers into the French colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana (Cayenne).

Emigration of Indian labourers to Natal (now South Africa) was approved on 7 August 1860, and the first ship from Madras arrived in Durban on 16 November 1860. These labourers formed the basis of the Indian South African community. They were sent to Natal on three-year contracts. The British Government also permitted to transport of Indian labourers to Danish colonies in 1862.

Indian labourers’ transportation to Dutch colony Surinam began under an agreement named Imperial. In return for Dutch rights to recruit Indian labourers, the Dutch transferred some old forts (remnants of slave trade) in West Africa to the British and also bargained for an end to British claims in Sumatra (ibid.). These labourers were signed up for five years and were provided with a return passage at the end of this term. They were still to be subject to Dutch law. The first ship carrying Indian indentured labourers arrived in Surinam in June 1873, followed by six more ships during the same year.

We find lots of abuses in the indenture system. Though migrant workers tried to oppose the abuses, it was very difficult. Some sent petitions to the agents of the colonial government who administered the indenture system. According to historical records, though indentured workers carried out acts of sabotage and revenge against the plantation owners on numerous occasions, this just resulted in increased repression. Huge Tinker even termed this system as ‘A New System of Slavery’ (1974). Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the Indian independence movements, saw first-hand plight of Asian indentured labourers in South Africa and campaigned on this issue during the first decade of the 20th century. The system was officially abolished by British government in 1917. From 1834 to the end of the World War I, Britain had transported about 2 million Indian indentured workers to 19 colonies including Fiji, Mauritius, Ceylon, Trinidad, Guyana, Malaysia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa and other countries.

Post-colonial Migration:

In the third phase we find three types of migrations of Indians. These are as follows:

1. During the 1970s, the Indian people, basically from Kerala, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab, Rajasthan, Eastern Utter Pradesh, Bihar and other states scattered voluntarily to many countries of the Middle East like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Yemen, Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and some other countries. They were basically labourers on contact basis. The year 1973 experienced the beginning on the rapidly increasing demand for expatriate labour in oil exporting countries of the Gulf and North Africa. Between 1975 and 1980 one million skilled workers had imported to manage and operate the new infrastructure in such countries.
2. In recent globalised multicultural world, the Indian intellectual people, basically academicians, skilled labourers and entrepreneurs are going to many multicultural metropolitan European and American countries like Britain, France, Germany, Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand and some other countries. Indian people have been going to America after the passing of the Immigration and Nationality Act in1965, a legislation that repealed national origins quotas in the US migration law. Mainly young, educated, middle-class men seeking employment and education are going to these metropolitan world centres for better future prospects. The Canadian Immigration and Refugee Law have undergone several changes over the past century to accommodate a diversity of applicants from various categories. The Immigration Act of 1976 allowed the entry of immigrants to fulfil commercial, social, cultural and demographic requirements of Canada. To continue its non- discriminatory immigration policy, the law was changed in 2002 and was called the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Now, the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Law is flexible and can be amended to allow the entry of skilled workers and experienced professionals who would be indispensable to Canada’s economic growth, as the act of 2002 has been tabled for amendment from time to time. Thus, we find many academics like Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri living in the United States, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, Sunetra Gupta in England, Rohinton Mistry, Ashish Gupta in Canada and some others in the First World countries.
3. We find another picture of Indian migrants living in some East African countries like Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and Pacific country Fiji during decolonisation and globalisation during 1970s. As the African countries like Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania were gaining independence, the anti-Indian spirit and the policies of Africanisation forced the settlers to re-migrate from former British imperial rule and from Dutch Guiana. In 1972, Uganda’s Idi Amin ordered 75000 Uganda Asians to leave the country in 90 days. Most of the people were of Indian origin and were successful traders, bankers and administrators or labourers. More than 32000 such Indian immigrants reached to different European countries like Britain, Netherlands; North American countries like United States and Canada, and other developed countries like Australia, New Zealand etc. as ‘twice migrants’. Mira Nair’s movie Mississippi Masala (1991) depicts this ‘twice migration’ nicely.

These are the structured and studied phases of Indians dispersed all over the world. There are other many countries where Indians are also settled temporary or permanently. Academics and Indian government need to study these Indians and their diasporic milieus in foreign countries in near future.

Articulation of Diaspora/Claiming Space by Diaspora

Though Indians immigrated to foreign countries mainly voluntarily and sometimes involuntarily, they used to raise their ‘voices’ in/from the host countries. In this section, we find different types of ‘voices’, articulated by these Indian diasporic people over different periods of times of their staying in foreign countries.

We have seen that during Pre-colonial period Indians immigrated to the Southest Asian countries for the purposes of trade and propagation of religion. During colonial period, Indians faced many problems in India, like famine, draught and poverty. So when they were offered indentureship by the East Indian Company, they didn’t have any choice but to agree and join in indentureship for imperial colonies. It is like circumstances forced them to join, voluntarily, into indentureship for going to Caribbean, East African, Pacific Island countries and some South American countries. They were agreed to some legal documents: they were initially contracted for five years; after that they were free to continue or leave the indentuteship. But when they landed in the plantations, they faced many problems: hardship of labour, food problem, physical and mental abuses and other traumatic situations. In alien lands, they were treated like almost slaves; almost the same ways Africans were treated in those plantations before the abolition of slavery in 1934.

In the first section, we have already discussed that these indentured labourers reported abuse of indenture system, and on 29 May 1839, overseas manual labour was prohibited. But it is continued illegally. As they raised their ‘voices’ against the abusive system, the Indian Government took many steps to reduce the abuse-Emigration Agents were appointed at each departure point; there were penalties for abuse in the system. But the abuse was continued directly or indirectly. Mahatma Gandhi had seen all these when he went to Natal. He started to resist the abuse in it. Finally in 1917, the British Government legally banned the  indentured labour system. Had the indentured labours not raised their voice against the abuse of the indenture system, the slave like conditions of Indian indentured labourers might have been continued.

When these Indian indentured labourers moored in imperial colonies, they formed ethnic  ghettoes  among  them.  These  ethnic  ghettoes  may  be  compared  with  Benedict Anderson’s ‘Imagined Communities’. In his book Imagined Communities (1982), Anderson argued that ‘nation’ is “an imagined political community”. According to him, it is imagined because -the members of even smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (ibid.). It “is imagined as a community because, – regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship”.

These labourers almost didn’t know each other. Still they found a communion among themselves when they realised they all belonged to the same ‘homeland’ India. These Indian labourers thus had a shared feeling and comradeship among themselves. They again started practising their ethnic cultural programmes in their ethnic ghettoes: religiosity, practising caste hierarchy and other home cultural practices. Along with their hardship at plantations and abuses by indenture masters, they performed all these to create their homely atmosphere in alien countries. Among the Post-colonial Indian diasporic people in the First World countries’ metropolitan cities, such community ghettos and organisations are also visible.

If we look into the Post-colonial Indian diasporic academics and professionals, we find different types of ‘voices’: radical, emancipated and enunciated ones. The highly educated and skilled Indians in general, and academics and creative writers in particular raised their ‘voices’ not only against their home cultural taboos, but also against the First World host societies’ certain rules against them, rules not accessible and favourable for  them. Homi K. Bhabha in The Location of Culture (1994) argues that these diasporic people reside “In-between” space or “Third Space.” He defines “In-between” space as- “[T]errain[s] for elaborating strategies of selfhood–singular or communal–that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself….It is in the emergence of the interstices-the overlap and displacement of domains of difference–that the intersubjectivity and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated.

This place is a place where we can find the amalgamation of different cultural ethos of different peoples of different nations. From this trans-national space a new kind of cultural identity is emerged. We find this ‘new identity’ among diasporic people, basically among the children of diasporic people.

According to him, “Third Space” is a mode of articulation, a way of describing a productive, and not merely reflective, space that engenders new possibility. It is an ‘interruptive, interrogative, and enunciative’ space of new forms of cultural meaning and production blurring the limitations of existing boundaries and calling into question the already established categorisations of culture and identity.

This “Third Space” is a space of emancipation and enunciation-anything can be emerged from this space. Here diasporic people feel free to articulate their ‘voices’ against their ‘home’ cultural tabooed things. Sometimes they also raise voices against the discrimination meted out over them by host people. In creative literature, we find many novelists raise their voices against their home cultural practices. They attack their home countries’ culture, religion, cultural tabooed things etc. Some writers like Jhumpa Lahiri, Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee Divakauni, Sunetra Gupta, Monica Ali and some other depicted their home countries India and Bangladesh’s cultures in a negative ways. Though they can’t raise such voices in their home countries-in India or in Bangladesh, from “Third Space”, they times and again raise and abuse Indian religion, caste system and other ethnic practices. V. S. Naipaul called his homeland India ‘An Area of Darkness’; Salman Rushdie called Prophet ‘Satan’ in his Satanic Verses. These writers try to align themselves to their newly adopted host countries. Writers like Rohinton Mistry in A Fine Balance (1995), Aravind Adiga in The White Tiger (2008), Sunetra Gupta’s Memories of Rain (1996) and other works of Indian diasporic writers portray the seamy sides of Indian caste and class hierarchies.

Sometimes they rewrite/reconstruct Indian ethnic mythological tales where they attempt to give voice to female’s characters. If we read Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions (2008), we find the articulation of Mahabharata’s Draupadi who doesn’t get  any distinguished articulation of Indian edition as she is depicted from male point of views. We find many other such writers, rewriting the Indian ethnic cultural tales to attack their home culture and to appease the Western people.

As such writings portray cultural negotiation of Indian diasporic people, we find the racial bias/physical torture, hate crime and other seamy pictures during this cross-cultural negotiation. Basically children of diaspora are the victim of such situations as they generally think they are natural citizen of the host countries as they have born there, and attempt to acculturate themselves in host countries. Diasporic writers, through picturing these adverse situations, try to get attention of the international policy-makers and host countries’ governments so as to create favourable situation with such articulation for their fellow Indians.

These writes also try to make their own identity with such articulation in foreign countries. For similar example, we find many African-American writers of ‘Harlem Renaissance’ who tried to make their distinguished identity for their African-American communities. Some female writers from Mexico (‘Chicana Feminists’) settle in the United States and are trying to make their own identity. Indian diasporic female writers always  attack Indian male patriarchal society and give voice to their female characters through their writings, therefore making their own identity as progressive, modem and radical one.

In popular cultures, such radical articulation is also visible. Some Indian female film directors living abroad make films which are different from the traditional Bollywood films or regional films of different Indian states. These diasporic film-directors are Gurinder Chadha, the British Indian filmmaker, Mira Nair, the American Indian filmmaker, Deepa Mehta, the Indo-Canadian filmmaker and others. Their films are called “auteur” (French word for “author”) films or directors’ films that reflect the directors’ personal creative visions. Sometimes, they depict the themes which are marginal, tabooed and untouched by traditional filmmakers. Thus, the scenario(s) or the very culture that these films document appear as counter culture to the culture documented in mainstream popular films in their country India. Few have attempted to document the tabooed subjects of Indian cultures and mostly their films have been banned by the religious fundamentalists. Deepa Mehta, originally from Punjab, India, is such an Indo-Canadian film director and screenwriter, well known for her Elements Trilogy-Fire (Canada/India, 1996), Earth (Canada/India, 1998), and Water (Canada/India, 2005/07).

These films by Indian diasporic filmmakers like Deepa Mahta, Mira Nair and others are termed by Hamid Naficy in his book An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001) as “accented” cinema which emerges, as Naficy argues, not from “the accented speech of the diegetic characters” within these films but from the “displacement of the filmmakers”(4). These “accented” films negotiate the interstitial dialogues between the home and host societies of the filmmakers.

These films give two sites for marginalised women-a site of resistance from the part of films’ characters and other being the site for the expression of that resistance for the filmmakers.  I  think  this  is  also  the  expression  of  postcolonial  feminism  through  these “accented” cinema(s). Thus, through these films the diasporic filmmakers try to eradicate the subaltern status of women and allow them a ‘space’ to be heard among mainstream social phenomena. These feminist “accented” cinema(s) not only project strong-willed and sexually-assertive women but also portray women as agents of progressive, revolutionary, egalitarian social thinkers who openly show their free spirits.

In traditional Bollywood and even in Hollywood films, we find the traditional virtues of womanhood like that of the sacrificing, virginal, passive, and servile women. But in feminist auteur films, there are strong-willed and sexually-assertive women. Deepa Mehta’s films like Fire and Water, Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Bhaji on the Beach (1993), Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala (1991), Monsoon Wedding (2001) and The Namesake (2007) are examples of this kind of films.

Some newspapers and magazines run by Indian academics abroad play a great role to articulate their voice while they face adverse situations abroad. Some of such newspapers include Indian Abroad, the Sangbad Bichitra, Confluence: South Asian Perspective since 2002 and others. Many popular Indian brands’ songs also play role for such causes. Besides these popular media, some of Indian local and global organisations in foreign countries play major roles to raise voice against the racial attack, hate crime and other such abusive practices of host people over them.

Some of the Indian professionals and diplomats take part in parliamentary election of their host countries and get elected as members of parliaments. They sometimes articulate for their Indian fellows, thus to create the reliable ambience for his/her fellow immigrants in foreign countries. There are many such elected politicians in foreign countries’ parliaments like Bobby Jindal, Priti Patel, Harjit Singh Sajjan and others.

These diasporic Indians face sometimes favourable and sometimes adverse situations as governments get changed in the host countries. Though during the United States of America’s ex-President Obama’s regime, all diasporic nationals all over world were happy and were getting access to almost everything in America, at present situation Indian academics and professionals in particular, and other nationals in general are facing lots of problems under President Trump’s tenure. Within three months of his tenure, three/four Indians are victim of ‘hate crime’. It is apparent that there is an implied message of Trump to such poor diasporic people in his country, and thus assailants get free hands to do such heinous racial things on Indian diaspora in particular. Though in other countries like Canada, Indian diaspora in particular and other countries diaspora in general, are getting positive atmosphere under President Mr. Justin Trudeau, with the declaration of Brexit (‘a term for the potential or hypothetical departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union’) and after Mr. Trump era, the global diaspora is observing a bleak picture for their future.

Conclusion:

In the above two sections we are familiarised with the different phases of dispersion/migration of Indians in foreign countries, and the very ‘voices’ they raise while staying in host countries. At present in this 21st century, people from Third World countries  in general and Indians in particular are facing adverse situations to moor in the First World countries’ metropolitan cities. This situation is more intensified after the United Kingdom’s planned withdrawal from the European Union in 2016 and after Mr. Donald Trump’s taking over the presidential post of the United States. With these two incidents we are observing anti-globalisation spirit in the present world affair. We are observing the initial decline of migrants’ flow to the First World countries. But global diasporic communities in particular and Indian diaspora in general are not sitting lazily. In host countries these people are frequently holding demonstration, strike and other means in proper organised ways to resist such adverse situations. Still in coming decade we would observe the decline of human mobility and the increase of dissident voice from diasporic communities.

References:

• Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London and New York: Verso, 2006, rpt. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
• Ghosh, Amitav. “The Diaspora in Indian Culture”. Public Culture 2.1 (1989): 73-78.
• Jain, Ravindra K. Indian Communities Abroad: Themes and Literature. New Delhi:  Manohar, 1993.
• Naficy, Hamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001.
• Sahoo, Ajaya Kumar. Transnational Indian Diaspora:The Regional Dimension. Delhi: Abhijeet Publication, 2006.
• Tinker, Hugh. A New System of Slavery. The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830-1920.
• London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
• Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_indenture_system>. Accessed on 20th April, 2017.