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ASSIGNMENT SOLUTIONS GUIDE (2014-2015)

M.S.O.E.-2
Diaspora and
Transnational Communities
Disclaimer/Special Note: These are just the sample of the Answers/Solutions to some of the Questions given in the
Assignments. These Sample Answers/Solutions are prepared by Private Teacher/Tutors/Auhtors for the help and Guidance
of the student to get an idea of how he/she can answer the Questions of the Assignments. We do not claim 100% Accuracy
of these sample Answers as these are based on the knowledge and cabability of Private Teacher/Tutor. Sample answers
may be seen as the Guide/Help Book for the reference to prepare the answers of the Question given in the assignment. As
these solutions and answers are prepared by the private teacher/tutor so the chances of error or mistake cannot be denied.
Any Omission or Error is highly regretted though every care has been taken while preparing these Sample Answers/
Solutions. Please consult your own Teacher/Tutor before you prepare a Particular Answer & for uptodate and exact
information, data and solution. Student should must read and refer the official study material provided by the university.
SECTION I
Q. 1. Describe the migration patterns of Indian Diaspora.
Ans. Indian Diaspora is a generic term used for addressing people who have migrated from the territories that are
currently within the borders of the Republic of India. It constitutes NRIs (Non-resident Indians) and PIOs (Persons of
Indian Origins). The Indian Diaspora is estimated to be over 30 million. The Government of India recognizes the importance of Indian Diaspora as it has brought economic, financial, and global benefits to India. The Indian Diaspora today
constitutes an important, and in some respects unique, force in world culture. The Romani migrated to northwest India
(the Punjab region) around 250 B.C. Another major emigration from the subcontinent was to South East Asia. It started
through early interaction of Indian traders and, after mid-first millennium CE, by some import of Brahmins. The Indian
merchant diaspora in Central Asia and Persia emerged in the mid-16th century and remained active for over four centuries. Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga was the first place in Tsardom of Russia where an Indian merchant colony was
established as early as the 1610s. Russian chroniclers reported the presence of Hindu traders in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 18th century. During the 19th century and until the end of the Raj, much of the migration that occurred was of
poor workers to other British colonies under the indenture system. The major destinations, in chronological order, were
Mauritius, Guyana, the Caribbean, Fiji and East Africa. There was also a small amount of free emigration of skilled
labourers and professionals to some of these countries in the 20th century. An unrelated system involved recruitment of
workers for the tea plantations of the neighbouring British colonies of Sri Lanka and Burma and the rubber plantations of
British Malaya (now Malaysia and Singapore).
Five Patterns of Indian Emigration: In India, we find five patterns of emigration, namely, indentured labour
emigration, kangani/maistry labour emigration, free or passage emigration, brain-drain or voluntary emigration and labour
emigration to west Asia. While the last two have resuted due to the contradictions of the post-colonial socio-economic
development of the country, the first three occurred during the colonial period.
Indentured Labour Emigration: The Indian indenture system was an ongoing system of indenture by which thousands
of Indians were transported to various colonies of European powers to provide labour for the (mainly sugar) plantations.
It started from the end of slavery in 1833 and continued until 1920.
Kangani/Maistry Labour Emigration: The kangani (derived from Tamil kankani, meaning foreman or overseer)
system prevailed in the recruitment of labour for emigration to Ceylon and Malaya (see Jayaraman 1975:6). A variant of
this system, called the maistry (derived from Tamil maistry, meaning supervisor) system was practised in the recruitment
of labour for emigration to Burma. Under these systems the kangani or maistry (himself an Indian immigrant) recruited
families of Tamil labourers from villages in the erstwhile Madras Presidency. Under these systems the labourers were
legally free, as they were not bound by any contract or fixed period of service.
Passage Emigration: These systems indentured and maistry or kangani, which began in the first and third quarter
of the 19th century, were abolished in 1938. Emigration from India did not cease after the abolition of indenture and other

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systems of organized export of labour. There was a steady trickle of emigration of members of trading communities from
Gujarat and Punjab to South Africa and East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda), and those from South India to South
East Asia. Most labourers emigrated to East Africa to work on the railroad construction. These emigrants were not
officially sponsored: they themselves paid their passage and they were free in the sense that they were not bound by
any contract.
Brain Drain: The UNDP estimates that India loses $2 billion a year because of the emigration of computer experts
to the U.S. Indian students going abroad for their higher studies costs India a foreign exchange outflow of $10 billion
annually.
Human capital flight, more commonly referred to as brain drain, is the large-scale emigration of a large group of
individuals with technical skills or knowledge. The reasons usually include two aspects which respectively come from
countries and individuals. In terms of countries, the reasons may be social environment (in source countries: lack of
opportunities, political instability, economic depression, health risks; in host countries: rich opportunities, political stability
and freedom, developed economy, better living conditions). In terms of individual reasons, there are family influence
(overseas relatives, and personal preference: preference for exploring, ambition for an improved career, etc). Although
the term originally referred to technology workers leaving a nation, the meaning has broadened into: the departure of
educated or professional people from one country, economic sector, or field for another, usually for better pay or living
conditions.
Labour Emigration to West Asia: Entire gulf region is sparsely populated, Saudi Arabia and Iraq being the only
Gulf countries with relatively large population of almost 22 and 23 million, respectively. As for the others, the corresponding
figures range from barely half a million to about 2.5. Foreign nationals are not permitted to own any business or immovable
property in the Gulf Countries. They are required to make a local citizen or entity a majority even if sleeping partner in
their enterprises. The Indian Diaspora in the Gulf consists entirely of non-resident Indian citizens (Or NRIs). A
conservative estimate of their number in the Gulf region, based on figures supplied by the Ministry of Labour and by
Indian Missions in that area would be at least 3 million. Semiskilled and unskilled workers still account for about 70% of
the Indian migrants; while white-collar workers are in the neighbourhood of 20% and professionals (doctors, engineers,
architects, bankers and chartered accountants) have a 10% share of the total. Interactions and contacts of Indian migrants
with the local people are limited and mostly of a formal and impersonal nature. They are naturally drawn to their compatriots
of a similar social status or background. A large number of Indian associations are thus to be found throughout the region,
which are based on commonalities such as place of origin, religion, language or profession. As many as a hundred such
associations engaged in cultural and recreational activities exist in Kuwait and UAE, while relatively smaller numbers
exist in Saudi Arabia and Oman. The Indian Art Circle in Kuwait has even constructed an auditorium with a seating
capacit of 1200 persons, in which regular cultural programmes and seminars are organized, and sometimes also performances
by invited Indian artists. The professional Indians and some of their white-collar workers are the only ones who qualify to
have their families with them due to the high basic income norms set by the Gulf Governments. The living and working
condition of the unskilled and semi-skilled Indian workers in the Gulf leaves much to be desired. A majority of these NRIs
are young males. More than half their numbers have invariably gone from Kerala, while the remaining persons have
mostly been from Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka and Tamilnadu. Over 60% of them have had little formal education.
Q. 2. Critically examine some of the apporaches to the study of Indian Diaspora.
Ans. The Study Of Indian Diaspora: In global historical terms, Indian diaspora displays three distinct phases one
followed by the other. In the first, Indian merchants and traders belonging to East and West coast of India tried to establish
contacts with the Middle East, Eastern and Northern Africa and South East Asia during the ancient and medieval periods.
While the ancient period is identified with the entity called Greater India, the magic of hybridization on medieval Indian
diaspora is evoked in fictional works like The Moors Last Sigh. The second phase of Indian diaspora is related to the
19th century emigration of the labouring population to plantation territories of the colonial period. The third phase is
connected with the contemporary emigration during the post-independence period.
Indian diaspora is being studied from diverse perspectives. The investment is being studied from diverse perspectives.
The investment capacity of NRIs in the wake of liberalization of the Indian economy, settling of Indian entrepreneurs in
the USA is one such angle. Of late, Indian exodus to the affluent countries is seen as brain bank and not as brain drain.
The Literary Point of View: V.S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie along with other creative writers and literary critics
represent this view. Similarly, Tejaswini Niranjana also provides a comprehensive view on Indian diaspora. According to
her, the construction of Indian identities in Trinidad, Guyana, South Africa, Surinam and Fiji is as relevant as the NRI
identities being shaped in post-colonial diaspora. However, it may be noted that the question of identity is part of social

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psychology and hence it is out of the area of present discussion. Moreover, both NRIs and PIOs were part of a larger
politico-economic framework that shows continuity from the colonial to the post-colonial period.
The Demographic Perspective: In this perspective, the numbers, fertility rate, linguistic and religious variables,
marital trends, etc. are focused. However, it is very difficult to find an accurate estimate. Widely accepted estimates show
the largest population of overseas Indians in the UK, followed by the USA, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.
Moreover, Surinam, Trinidad and Tobago, Fiji, Mauritius and Guyana constitute the countries where nearly half of the
total migrated Indian population is located.
The Geographical Aspect: This perspective divides the Indian diaspora into six zones, viz. North America, Europe,
Africa and Mauritius, West and South East Asia, the Pacific and the Carribean. Chandra Jayawardena (1968) wrote one of
the earliest articles on Indian communities abroad. It may be noted that diasporas across the globe influence politics both
within nations and across nations as these ethnicities move across territories.
Anthropological Understanding: This perspective cuts across the views presented above. According to this
perspective, people having national identities migrate elsewhere and become ethnic groups in other countries. Benedict
Anderson describes it as the ethnization of existing nationalities who practice long distance nationalism. For example,
Indians waving Indian flags during a cricket match or they may wave Pakistani flag when Pakistanis are pitted against
non-Asian team.
Q. 3. Discuss the nature of Indian diaspora in South and South East Asia.
Ans. Indian Diaspora in South Asia: In response to severe criticism, the British Imperial Legislative Council
abolished the indenture system in 1916. By that time, more than 1.5 million Indians had been shipped to colonies in the
Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, according to estimates by the historian Brij V. Lal. During roughly the same period,
another form of labour migration was taking place. Tapping the labor surplus of South India, mostly in Tamil Nadu, the
managers of tea, coffee, and rubber plantations in Sri Lanka, Malaya (part of present-day Malaysia), and Burma authorized Indian headmen, known as kangani or maistry, to recruit entire families and ship them to plantations.
Thus the system is commonly referred to as the kangani system for Sri Lanka and Malaya, and the maistry system for
Burma. India, Malaya, and Sri Lanka played a role in this system by licensing the recruiters and partly by subsidizing
transportation to the plantations. In Malaya, kangani migration took place in addition to the indentured labour system and
mostly replaced it from 1900 onwards. Indian workers in these three locations had close ties to India, partly because of the
relatively short travel distance. Especially in Sri Lanka, however, the host society prevented any settling or mingling with
the local Sinhalese. Compared to indentured labourers, the lives of kangani migrants were less regulated and provided the
comfort of having moved with their families and village contacts. Sociologist Chandrashekhar Bhat estimates that about
6 million people had left Indian shores when the system was abolished in 1938: about 1.5 million to Sri Lanka, 2 million
to Malaya, and 2.5 million to Burma.
In addition to low-skilled workers, members of Indias trading communities settled in many countries where indentured
labourers had been brought or where business opportunities in the British Empire were promising. For example, Gujarati
merchants became shop owners in East Africa, and traders from present-day Kerala and Tamil Nadu provided rural
credits for peasants in Burma, Ceylon, and Malaya or were involved in retail trade.
Indian Diaspora in Southeast Asia: There are 11 countries that make the Souteast Asian region. The History of
Southeast Asia has been characterized as interaction between regional players and foregin powers. Though 11 countries
currently make up the region, the history of each country is intertwined with all the others. Southeast Asia is a diverse
region. There are many ethnic groups in this part of the world. Similarly different religions are also practiced here.
Buddhism, Islam and Christianity are the state religions for different countries. India has maintained cordial relations
with these countries. Some main topics like history, geography, economy, culture and tradition etc. of the country have
been given.
In 2004, 8.4 percent (293,000) of Singapores population reported Indian ethnicity. Many Indians settled there over
the last 150 years; they are mainly labourers and domestic workers. As a result of Singapores immigration policy, low tax
rates, and economic growth, the country has witnessed a large influx of Indian professionals since the 1990s.
SECTION II
Q. 4. Examine the signficance of Bollywood for the Indian diaspora.
Ans. Mainstream Indian cinema, affectionately known as Bollywood, is no longer a national cinema, but a transnational
one, not only in terms of production but in terms of audience. Throughout its history, Bollywood cinema has accumulated
fans of various ethnicities from central Asia to Africa, and in recent years has caught the attention of Western viewers and
film scholars. Part of this explosion of popularity is due to new venues and technologies for exhibition, such as film

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festivals, DVDs, and internet piracy, as well as cultural changes such as the acceptance of Indian fashions in Western
societies and the adoption of American and European styles in Indian popular culture. However, perhaps the most important reason for the global proliferation of Indian cinema is that South Asians, especially middle to upper class, highskilled workers, are immigrating to all continents. Generally speaking, this demographic has no desire to cut off its ties
with its original culture and thus Bollywood producers and distributors have actively sought to attract this diasporic
audience.
Compared to its domestic audience, the diasporic market is relatively small, but because of high ticket prices, the
profits from a single admission in the United States or Great Britain can equal that of ten tickets in India, so therefore
investors are open to breaking the Bollywood narrative tradition of celebrating Indian citizenship to produce works that
uphold traditional Indian values in an international, pan-Indian sense (Dwyer and Pate). The question of Indian identity
as represented in new Bollywood films is thus increasingly transnational in outlook, with the meaning of the NonResident Indian (NRI) shifting from the villain who needs to be saved from Western corruption to the new Indian aristocrat.
Scholars of Indian cinema have already begun to explore how this new conception of the NRI contributes to shifting
understandings of Indian nationhood from the point of view of the dominant strain of Bollywood history.
Bollywood and Diaspora consumption and Representations: Bollywood, the Indian film industry based in
Mumbai, is the cultural dominant of modern India. Both in India and in the Indian diaspora it exists as a cinematic form
and as ever-changing cultural effects. The pre-eminent Indian film critic Ashish Rajadhyaksha has in fact distinguished
between its reality and the hype around it. This essay acknowledges Rajadhyakshas influential reading of Bollywood as
cinema as well as a fad, a taste, an Indian exotica, and a global phenomenon growing out of, as it so happens, the cultural
and political economy of a film industry based primarily in Mumbai. However, it is argued that no amount of reading of
it as a simulacral, techno-realist image readily packaged and re-packaged for consumption by almost anyone gets to the
heart of the system, to the crux internal to its design, to spectatorial response around the shedding of a tear. This knowledge
and this response is pivotal to a Bollywood where sentimental dialogues dominate.
Hindi commercial cinema colloquially known as Bollywood is now the focus of rapidly escalating interest both
amongst teachers of film or media and in the academic community. Skilfully choreographed dances, moving songs,
aesthetically pleasing or lavish sets and costumes and sensational plots and characters have invited the attention of newer
and wider audiences and, in tandem, given rise to literature that seeks to explain, or to explain away, the popularity of
Hindi films. Recently, dozens of scholarly and journalistic articles and several book-length studies (Chakravarty 1998,
Prasad 1998, Kazmi 1999, Mishra 2002) have offered interesting textual analyses of aspects of Hindi films ranging from
nationalism and culture to the role of women and nature of the hero. Others have championed aspects of these films
and assumed that viewing them is essentially Indian, radically tradi-tional or popular in that it empowers Bollywood
audiences by connecting them to a set of necessary cultural traditions. Historically, however, textual studies of have
argued that Hindi films are based on the good versus evil master narratives of epics, are pre-realist, spectacular, irrational,
based on emotion, formulaic, escapist, patriarchal and/or ultra-nationalist and generally politically.
Hindi film narratives follow a limited range of pathways but the meanings made from sequences in these films vary
significantly. Young viewers can watch and interpret both romantic and violent sequences in Hindi films in radically
different ways based on intersecting aspects of their identities; their own interpretations may change based on the viewing
context and companions, their age or the number of times they have viewed a scene. Life experiences draw young viewers
closer to or distance them from particular film narratives. As this is the case, is not true that groups of viewers such as
South Asians born in the UK are more likely to believe in or accept nationalist and patriarchal narratives than those who
live in India; nor is it the case that the identities of those viewing films in India are more stable and fixed than their BritishAsian counterparts. Changes in both countries, including the availability of new media and foreign satellite channels,
have meant that there is as much questioning of identity, values and beliefs, and playing with possible actions and futures
in each location, and much of this is related to and inflected by film viewing. Discussions reveal that sequences at the
beginning or in the middle of Hindi films carry as much if not more psychic weight for young people than those at the
conclusion, and may be viewed multiple times, even when a film is not liked as a whole. Thus heroic conformity and
textual closure are not necessarily reflected in the meanings carried away by viewers. On the other hand, contemporary
Hindi film fictions of history that play around with themes of ethnicity and gender, religion, love and violence also
contribute to the highly authoritarian contexts in which many viewers live, and some viewers are more ready to answer
the invitations of such films than others who have experienced actual events or are aware of the political undertones. In
most discussions of viewing, regardless of the political positions being explored, talk about films was a complex dialectic
of critique and pleasure, rationality and emotion. Textual critiques of Hindi film texts and of films more generally need to

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be rethought in the light of such varying reasons for and modes of engagement and differing meanings made by viewers.
Bollywood is more than its surface effects, more than just costume and romance, more than a series of selected
images constructed primarily for upwardly mobile Indian and Indian diaspora consumption. Bollywood so understood is
marked by a narrative of slippage, a narrative which leads to the shedding of a tear as the outpouring of sentiment as a
performative act on the part of the forms Model spectators distinguishes Bollywood from itself. To make the case two
recent Bollywood films Eklavya (2007) and Saawariya (2007) are read to show the continuing strength of sentimental
melodrama and after, Laura Mulvey, to show also how the form constructs a collective subjectivity which transcends
gender difference.
An important phenomenon is the strong presence of movie theaters specializing in first-run Indian films, not just
from Bollywood but regional mainstream cinemas as well. New York, California, and New Jersey all have a good number,
while Indian movie theaters can also be found in Texas, Illinois, Florida, and Massachusetts. These theaters tend to be
located in larger Indian cultural and business centres (India towns) so the theatre becomes more than a space to see a
film, but a space to be Indian. In fact, Indian cricket matches are often projected in Indian movie theatre, turning the space
into a place of ethnic pride as well a space to see and hear important news from the homeland. However, the Indian movie
theatre is no fantasy of Delhi or Calcutta. Although I am sure some audiences go to lose themselves in India so to speak,
I would imagine that most patrons do not forget the fact that they are in America. Therefore, there is an ironic sense of
distanciation from the homeland, the feeling that one is a consumer of India but can never be a producer. This is important
in understanding the reception of Bollywood films that are set in the United States; audiences are cognizant of the fact
that these images dont reflect any reality of NRIs, but rather are the reflection of the homelands perception of NRIs, and
it is through this mind-frame that South Asian Americans interpret the images.
For the film producers, catering to this important diasporic audience by making films with NRI settings easily fits
into preexisting traditions of genre, style, and character. First, though the songs now take place in the United States, the
musical numbers still adhere to traditional narrative functions. Pendakur identifies six major types of musical numbers in
Bollywood cinema. The Seesa Padya is sung in mythological battle films and has roots in rural traditions so is not relevant
to genres focused on NRIs which are usually urban romances. However, in a film like Kal Ho Naa Ho, we encounter the
other types. The prayers sung by Nainas grandmother and her friends is an example of the devotional song (although it is
interesting that these devotional song numbers become comical when they are displaced to the United States); the elaborate
wedding number Maahi Ve is an example of the festival song which propels the family melodrama; the song Kuch To
Hua Hai is an example of the romantic number; Its the Time to Disco is an example of the night club song; and the
title song Kal Ho Naa Ho is a definitive example of the song of pathos. Therefore the musical number is flexible
enough to be mobilized to fit the new settings and themes.
Another convention of the Bollywood musical number is the travelogue, where song and dance take place in a
montage of cultural landmarks (often cutting to them without any temporal or spatial logic). In the 90s, the threat of video
and satellite forced Bollywood producers to entice local audiences into the theatre by increasing production values, and
this included the use of as many famous locations as possible (Ganti 37). Producers often took their crews to Europe,
North America, and Africa to achieve this effect. Stories of NRIs obviously fit very naturally into this trend, providing
integrated musical numbers with settings in New York (Kal Ho Naa Ho) to throughout Europe (Dilwale Dulhania Le
Jayenge).
Clichs about Hindi film audience that circulate amongst the intelligentsia have often suggested that they tend to be
pre-rational, childish, individualist, superstitious, easily influenced, patriarchal, authori-tarian and/or tradition-bound
(Valicha 1988, Nair 2002, Vishwanath 2002). Certainly, given the penchant of Hindi films for melodrama, few audience
theorists have seen the audiences emotional engagement and their pleasures in the films as adequate grounds for study.
Indeed, assumptions about Hindi film viewing tend to follow in the path of dominant assumptions about much other
popular cultural spectatorship across the globe. Namely, critics write as if spectatorship is monolithic and based on
demographics; the film texts themselves are coherent and viewed in a linear manner; their spectators have fixed identities
and are more or less highly vulnerable to textual influences depending on their social background. Many conclude from
this that textual closure must cue psychic closure in the sense that the endings of Hindi films, with all their potential
erasures of class differences and ethnic, inter-generational and other conflicts, are somehow seen to affect audiences
more than other sequences in the films. These trends in terms of the theorising of film texts from production to narrative
and these assumptions about spectators have, in general, meant that there is unremitting concern expressed about the
effects of Hindi films. Those writers most uneasy about commercial films often eulogise neo-Realist cinema and third
cinema in India, and operate on the premise that the effects of commercial films need to be counteracted via censorship or

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ideological decoding and intellectual critique for the masses.

Q. 5. How has internet aided in bringing together communities of diasporic Indians?
Ans. ICTs, Nationalism, Religious Diasporas : Information Communication technologies, nationalisms and religious diaspora are inextricably linked within processes of globalization. Hamid Mowlana identifies three primary actors
in transborder flows of communication: governments, transnational corporations, and individuals (1997). Most commentators on the communication aspects of globalization tend to focus on the first two. However, the aggregate impact of
cross-border contact among individuals using means such as mail, telegraph, telephone, facsimile, and digital technologies, has been substantial. There are studies which have examined communication links among members of diasporic
communities spread over several continents. Global migration trends have produced transnational groups related by
culture, ethnicity, language, and religion. Whereas members of some of these groups had generally operated small media
(weekly newspapers, magazines, radio and television programming) to meet the information and entertainment needs of
their communities, the emergence of digital technologies is enabling them to expand such communication activities to a
global scale. These developments have implications for official policies on broadcasting and on culture/multiculturalism.
In scholarly literature, ethnic nationalism is usually contrasted with civic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism bases membership of the nation on descent or heredityoften articulated in terms of common blood or kinshiprather than on political membership. Hence, nation-states with strong traditions of ethnic nationalism tend to define nationality or citizenship
by jus sanguinis (the law of blood, descent from a person of that nationality) while countries with strong traditions of civic
nationalism tend to define nationality or citizenship by jus soli (the law of soil, birth within the nation-state). Ethnic
nationalism is therefore seen as exclusive, while civic nationalism tends to be inclusive. Rather than allegiance to common civic ideals and cultural traditions, then, ethnic nationalism tends to emphasize narratives of common descent.
Virtual communities are used for a variety of social and professional groups. It does not necessarily mean that there is a
strong bond among the members. The analysis of the literature dealing with the socio-cultural, political and discursive
aspects of cyberspatial south asian formations reveals an interweaving focus on examining such online formations through
theoretical frames provided by concepts such as imagined community.
Benedict Anderson defined a nation as an imagined political community [that is] imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. An imagined community is different from an actual community because it is not (and cannot be)
based on everyday face-to-face interaction between its members. Instead, members hold in their minds a mental image of
their affinityfor example, the nationhood you feel with other members of your nation when your imagined community
participates in a larger event such as the Olympics. As Anderson puts it, a nation is imagined because the members of
even the 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. Members of the community probably will never know one another face to
face; however, they may have similar interests or identify as part of the same nation. The media also create imagined
communities, through targeting a mass audience or generalising and addressing citizens as the public. These communities
are imagined as both limited and sovereign. They are limited in that nations have finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond
which lie other nations.They are sovereign insofar as no dynastic monarchy can claim authority over them, in the modern period. Moreover, Jon Anderson and Anand Mitra have written about Arab and Indian diaspora.
South Asian Digital Diasporas Mobile (gadget) Generations
The internet and other new technologies of representation create fresh challenges to understanding the relationship
between culture and the forms that shape and disseminate it. The role of the internet in forming and fostering long
distance nationalism (Benedict Andersons phrase) among the Indian digital diaspora challenges the commonplace notion that cultural and geo-national space necessarily overlap.
We tend to assume that place, identity, and culture are axiomatically linked. Culture grows in place and over time,
defined by place, continuity, and connectivity. Culture is homely, as the critic Homi Bhabha reminds us, because it is
familiar through its apparent continuity. Particular historical factors have contributed to the rise of this digital diaspora
with strong links to its national culture: the first is the steady increase of Indian professionals in Anglo-America with the
relaxation of immigration restrictions. The relative isolation of expatriate South Asians in their discrete locations in
Northern countries has been offset effectively by a large, instant virtual community. This community may be geographically scattered but is electronically and often epistemologically and ideologically-connected and contiguous. The geographic disconnection from the homeland, the historic rupture with the homelands national time, and the cultural confusion that migration produces can be counteracted as the digital diaspora reconnects virtually with the originary national
place. Bit by bit, cultural connections reassemble in virtual space.
Today, Indian use of the internet in Anglo-America includes services and software that attempt to link the originary

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and the diasporic worlds through sites on culture, customs, religion, history, news, jobs, dating, and matrimony. Place still
matters, but it matters differently. Quite apart from helping the expatriate cope with the loss of the nation (its place, time,
and culture), the internet has now become a privileged space for producing and reproducing the supposedly lost national
culture through the capabilities of digital logic. A significant component of this logic is the advantage of speed in selecting, assembling, replicating, and disseminating the elements of an alternative history that compensates for the absence of
a real one in the diaspora. The rapidly growing internet archives can then provide a virtual history for a group that has
little history or presence on the books in these parts of the world. With computer technologies, information is generated
and archived almost immediately, offsetting the usual requirements of years, even decades, for accumulating a significant
archival database or history.
Moreover, on the net it is possible to generate quickly a system of cross-referencing and citation that produces the
illusion of longevity and numbers, promoting consensus that otherwise would have taken far more time and effort. Quick
replication can convey the impression of consensus simply through repetition and dissemination, adding up to spurious
consensus about national culture, its heirs, and its enemies. Instead of erasing it, the time-space compression digital
technologies afford can renew the importance of homeland geography, which can be reconceived as sacred ground for the
nostalgic expatriate. In recent years, some work has been done on the role of expatriate Hindus in the rise and support of
fundamentalism in the homeland. This technologically enabled and educated group has been implicated in the use of the
internet for quick dissemination of politically motivated disinformation with occasionally disastrous consequences in the
homeland.

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