Dr Vinay Lal’s Concepts of the Indian Diaspora

Dr. Vinay Lal, an Indian born US settled Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) has published articles on the aspects of diaspora and about the migrants of India. He has created an official website where he portrays the cultures, religions, landscape and so on about India, dedicating a special page for Indian diaspora. He explains: “The origins of the modern Indian diaspora lie mainly in the subjugation of India by the British and its incorporation into the British empire. Indians were taken over as indentured labor to far-flung parts of the empire in the nineteenth-century, a circumstance to which the modern Indian populations of Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, Surinam, Malaysia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and other places attest in their own peculiar ways. Over two million Indian men fought on behalf of the empire in numerous wars, including the Boer War and the two World Wars, and some remained behind to claim the land on which they had fought as their own. As if in emulation of their ancestors, many Gujarati traders once again left for East Africa in large numbers in the early part of the twentieth century. (sscnet.ucla.edu)

Lal says that the dispersal of Indian labours and professionals took a great rise in number during the period of post-World War II including many other South Asians who helped in the reconstruction of the war-torn countries, especially the European countries. The 13 unskilled labours from South Asia changed the physical landscape of the Middle East and the Indian professionals on the other hand marked their presence in countries like Unite States, Canada and Australia. (sscnet.ucla.edu) He, further in his essay, explains how several immigrants of US (where he speaks of US settled Indians) who had an intention to settle back in India had returned to US in a few years time by blaming the discomforting conditions prevailing in India. He answers the question that he puts forth, ― “who and what is an Indian?” (sscnet.ucla.edu) and explains the prevailing positions of Hindus where women at some point are degraded for following their tradition with ―’vermillion’. “The Indian woman in her ‘native dress’, with the vermillion dot on her forehead, is easily seen as an embodiment of sheer otherness, and so she has been perceived by the so-called “dot-busters”, a gang of white teenagers operating in New Jersey who have already been responsible for several violent crimes against Indians.” (sscnet.ucla.edu).

In the countries like North America and the U.K., the traditional costumes of Indians have been in public scrutiny and discussion according to him where Sikhs insisted the government to exempt them from wearing helmets while riding bicycles and motorcycles to wear helmets, since they cannot be worn over turbans, and that their religious faith requires them to wear turbans. (sscnet.ucla.edu). The corner shop according to Lal, is now mainly in the hands of Indians. (sscnet.ucla.edu). He poses the questions like, ―”What do the English think of that’, but also: ‘If the English landscape has been so altered, what is English about England’? The diaspora, in short, affects the center as well.” (sscnet.ucla.edu)

He further employs the subject of cinema by bringing in Bollywood. He says that all Indians maintain some sort of link to their motherland through Hindi films; a phenomenon according to him which is unique to the Indian diaspora,

“… what Hollywood is to Western Europe, the Bombay Hollywood (“Bollywood”) is to the Middle East and East Africa. The modesty, not to mention Puritanism, of the Hindi film is said to explain its appeal to the Islamic world; and though we may well contest that interpretation, it is worthy of note that Hindi films found in grocery and video stores across the U.S. often carry subtitles in Arabic, one language which is indubitably not spoken by any Indian community in the U.S.!” (sscnet.ucla.edu)

He delves into the concept of two sorts of otherness in Indians. The newspapers published by Indian communities carrying a section of matrimonial ads through which the Indians, ―locate one another, they pose difficult questions about ‘otherness’, both the ‘otherness’ of Indians in relation to ‘Americans’ and the internal ‘otherness’ of certain Indians in relation to other Indians.” (sscnet.ucla.edu)