Political Integration in Indian Diaspora Societies

Ruben Gowricharn

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367775667
• eBook ISBN: 9781000180411
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book studies the political integration of Indian diaspora communities into their host societies. It argues that insertion occurs on an ethnic basis which enables these groups to utilise their clout, and at the same time exert collective rights in matters like freedom of religion, organisation and lifestyle. Drawing on case studies from South Africa, America, and the Caribbean, the volume analyses different forms, levels and patterns of groupist political integration. It examines various instances of integration such as anti-Indian apartheid laws; the life and times of Dr Sudhindra Bose, one of the early Bengali intellectuals in the US; Hindutva organisations in the US/UK; as well as the introduction of the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) Scheme by the Indian government.

An important intervention in the study of ethnic groups and their integration, the book will be of interest to students and researchers of diaspora studies, globalization and transnational migration, cultural studies, minority studies, sociology, political studies, international relations, and South Asian studies.

1
Introduction

The politics of integration in Indian diaspora societies

Ruben Gowricharn

1. The concept of groupist integration

In the burgeoning literature on the Indian diaspora, a strong consensus has emerged that it is a highly fragmented whole, composed of people that migrated to Asian, African, Caribbean, and Western societies, as well as societies in the Pacific and Australia (Lal, Reeves, and Rai 2006; Clarke, Peach, and Vertovec 1990; Jayaram 2011; Chatterji and Washbrook 2013). These societies are labelled ‘Indian diaspora societies’. When settling in their societies of destination, emigrants have to come to terms with local conditions and organise a feeling of belonging. Nowadays, Indians are well integrated in most host societies (i.e. Clarke et al. 1990; Chakravorty, Kapur, and Singh 2017; Jayaram 2011; Lal et al. 2006; see also chapters in Chatterji and Washbrook 2013; Hedge and Sahoo 2018; Raghuram, Sahoo, Maharaj, and Sangha 2008). Their insertion in the host society has been determined by the historical period of departure, the demographic and cultural specificities of their communities, and the social and human capital they possessed, as well as by the opportunities provided by the host society.

What does it mean to be integrated? In Western social science, the concept of integration is applied to individuals. The general idea is that immigrants enter a new society and obtain access to core institutions such as health services, labour markets, education, political rights, and shelter (Penninx 2013; Joppke 2007). Thus conceived, integration refers to participation in core institutions of the host society. It may be partial since a migrant can be well educated and unemployed at the same time. In this context, Schinkel (2017) argues that the integration discourse in Western societies reveals the dominant expectation of the host society rather than the specific problems of the immigrants. Considered from this perspective, integration cannot be defined without reference to the prevailing ideology of the host society.

Integration in core institutions is established as citizenship. The concept of citizenship tends to assume the formal equality of individuals, ignoring the presence of groups and disparities in resources, even when it is differentiated into republican, liberal, and communitarist or civic and multicultural variants (Bloemraad 2015; Goodman 2015; cf. Schinkel 2017). But the differentiation hardly touches on the limitations surrounding the concept itself. The major limitation consists of the ignorance of differences in classes and racial and ethnic backgrounds of citizens, although Western societies display a significant variety of national integration models (Bloemraad, Korteweg, and Yurdakul 2008; Soysal 2000; Van Reekum, Duyvendak, and Bertosi 2012). Citizenship is tied to a nation-state that regulates the allotment of the rights and duties of individuals and therefore the opportunity to become incorporated into the host society. Citizenship may include some rights that can only be exercised as a group, such as the freedom of religion and lifestyle, but the individualist design of the concept overrules. Thus conceived, political integration refers to access to political institutions, notably the allotment of political rights such as the right to run for office, to vote, and to appeal on political and legal provisions of the host society. When immigrants obtain these rights, they may be considered politically integrated.

In European parlance, integration refers to individual and household independence of migrants, presupposing that they are employed, that their children attend school, and that they exercise their rights as citizens (Penninx 2013). In contrast, in the United States, the term ‘assimilation’ is in vogue and refers to a high degree of cultural blending with the lifestyles dominant in the host society (Alba and Nee 2003). Both concepts refer to a state in society, a position that reflects a degree of migrants in achieving independence and thus exercising citizenship rights. While integration and assimilation are conceptually distinct, they overlap. In both cases, some degree of cultural adoption, such as language, is a powerful requirement to perform in the host society. Moreover, in actual practice, in both continents, citizens as well as ethnic groups do exercise their rights to organise themselves collectively, as exemplified in ethnic ‘civil societies’ that include organisations ranging from religion and social welfare to transnational activities. Because of the dominant expectations in each society, the specific content, options, and limitations of citizenship vary from society to society (Schinkel 2017).

In an older strand of political science literature, (ethnic) groups have been acknowledged as a collective force. Ethnicity has been studied as voter alignments based on class, ideology, and religion (Lipset and Rokkan 1967) or so-called pillars, characteristic of some European societies, notably in the Netherlands. The dissolution of these traditional groups has been framed as the decline of ethnic cleavages as elucidated in individualisation, rising levels of education, and increased welfare (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2001; Franklin, Mackie, and Valen 1992; Van der Eijck and Franklin 2009). In this context, Van Dam (2015) points out that this dissolution was not absolute, since relations between groups and institutions (such as the church) were preserved, although they became loose. However, generally, ethnicity is seen as detrimental to successful integration. Examples include the view that the positive educational performances of second-generation immigrants in Western societies are closely related to their declining ethnicity and increasing assimilation (Alba and Foner 2016; Alba and Nee 2003; see also Gans 2007). This inverse relation between integration and ethnicity has become a dominant conception of Western societies and is adopted by migrants as well.

Except for a few studies (i.e. Pfeffer 2015), the assumption of an ethnic group as a collective actor is contested in Western scholarly literature, most likely because of its prevailing individualistic ideology. An influential position is Brubakers’ (2004: 8), who has questioned ‘ethnic groupism’ and what he described as ‘the tendency to treat ethnic groups, nations and races as substantial entities to which interest and agency can be attributed’. However, denying ethnic groups as a collective actor, for example, in the field of politics, religion, and culture (think of community festivals), or as something treated by others as a single (racial or ethnic) entity to be excluded is quite an overreaction (Maharaj 2018; Reddy 2016). Brubakers overlooks that ethnic groupism has been a powerful force for creating provisions and services such as schools, temples and mosques, radio and television stations, entrepreneur-ship, orphanages, and political parties.

This book departs from the citizenship approach typical of western studies on political integration. Instead, it highlights the political integration of Indian diasporic communities as a group, referred to as ethnic groupist political integration. The success of these communities presupposes ethnic group formation, notably the establishment of ethnic institutions. However, group formation, while sometimes being a spontaneous process, requires an ethnic ideology (most often some degree of ethnic chauvinism) and leadership in different domains of life such as religion, politics, and culture. Along with the prevailing political conceptions in the host society and the opportunities provided, these forces specify how Indian groups integrate into core institutions of receiving societies. Rather than the labour market or welfare arrangements being key to their integration, this book contends that the formation of an ethnic group is pivotal for the integration of Indian groups in the host society and can resist the dissolution of the group, as is often assumed in Western scholarship (Alba and Nee 2003; Favell 2001; Gans 2007). Consequently, political integration may be conceived at the individual and at the group level.

2. Indian diaspora societies

The assumption of an ethnic group should not be taken for granted, however. In some host societies (Jamaica, the French territories in the Caribbean), Indians are assimilated and hardly constitute an ethnic group (cf. Clarke et al. 1990). Even where ethnic groups are established, the ethnicity may differ spatially and historically as leadership, group ideology, ethnic and environmental resources, and interracial relations may vary. Focusing on the political integration of Indian diaspora communities, basically two categories emerge, depending on the demographic size and the degree of ethnic cohesion.

The first category consists of relatively small ethnic minorities and falls apart in several subcategories, including:

• Indian diaspora communities in Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Singapore (Lal et al. 2006);
• Indians in East African societies where communities managed to retain important institutions such as religion, family life, and public festivals (Younger 2010; Aiyer 2015; Reddy 2016). South Africa, which has a substantial population of Indian descent, represents a strong community and can be classified as an exception because of its historical ties in the British empire and relations with India;
• Post WWII emigrations from India to Western societies, notably the United Kingdom, Canada, United States, and Australia. Here, Indian emigrants have established groups based on known communities such as Gujarati, Sindhi, Bengali, etcetera, while ‘Indian’ is a nationalist label referring to an overarching identity (Mishra 2016; Jayaram 2011; Hedge and Sahoo 2018). This duality of identity contrasts with the ethnic group formation of the descendants of indentured labourers, who were also recruited from a diversity of communities but blended into one ethnic group in their new social environment (Gowricharn 2013).
• The second recent destination of Indian emigration is the Gulf States, almost exclusively a labour migration (Jain and Oommen 2017). These people are considered sojourns and deprived of major citizen rights. However, in many of these societies, such as Kuwait and Oman, Indian communities have emerged due to the permanent settlement of Indian migrants.
• Skilled labour (Information and Communication Technology) migration to the European Union, specifically from the southern part of India.

In some societies, Indian migrant communities may be curtailed in exercising citizens’ rights to practice their religion, speak their language, or conduct their lifestyle (Reddy 2016; Maharaj 2018; Aiyer 2015). As a result, not all Indian groups can be considered politically fully integrated, at least not in the same manner. Different forms of political integration need to be considered. The differences between the forms of representation may be accounted for by many preconditions, including the demographic size of the Indian group, the political system, the location of the group in the social stratification of the host society, the moral credit assigned to the immigrant group, the ambition of the group as exemplified by its ideology, the social networks, the leadership, and the degree of entanglement of the group with the diaspora.

In the second category of societies, including Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad, Mauritius, and Fiji, Indian groups constitute the largest ethnic group in the population. Indians in these societies consist predominantly of descendants of indentured labourers of which substantial parts have migrated to North America, Europe, and Australia. They have established ethnic political parties in their second homeland and are formally represented at the national level (Lal et al. 2006; Jayaram 2011; Hedge and Sahoo 2018). In some societies, such as Mauritius and Suriname, they have participated in elections without being thwarted. If they ended up in the parliamentary opposition, that was a fair outcome, granted the skewness of the electoral system. In other societies, Guyana and Fiji being examples, Indian groups have been politically excluded for a long time, sometimes forcibly. Some societies fall in between, for example, when the Indian group is excluded at the level of symbolic representation, as in Trinidad (Munasinghe 2006).

Groupism implies some involvement in the Indian diaspora, as the Indian group is somehow ‘tied’ to the parental or ancestral homeland. Cohen (2018) pointed out that the concept of diaspora requires two building blocks: an ethnic group and a homeland. To these two one can add a third: a host land into which the Indian group strives to integrate. The involvement with the ancestral homeland generates a persistent ambivalence since overseas Indians have to deal with two or more homelands: India and the society to which they have moved. This renders a different type of integration rather than a refusal to integrate, one that comprises both home and hostlands, while manifested as a group.

This duality has a few consequences that impact their integration negatively (for debates on this issue, see Eisenlohr 2007; Munasinghe 2006; Gowricharn 2015; Aiyer 2015). Despite modern-day conceptions of belonging and citizenship, old European conceptions of (highly assimilated and more or less closed) nation-states prevail in many of these former colonial societies. In this concept, individuals are required to have one loyalty to one nation-state, assimilate in one cultur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: the politics of integration in Indian diaspora societies
• Part I National integration
• Part II Dualities in integration
• Part III Global dimensions of integration
• Index