This book critically examines new perspectives on the transformations in the Indian diaspora. It studies the changing perspectives on the historical background of the diaspora and analyses fresh and emerging views in response to new configurations in diaspora relations. The volume highlights the transformation of the old Indian diaspora into a new ensemble in which economic, ideological and cultural forces predominate and interact closely. It looks at various themes including Indian indentured emigration to sugar colonies, comparisons between labour migration from India and China, the Girmitiya diaspora, the Indian diaspora in Africa and the rise of racial nationalism, India’s soft power in the Gulf region, and the repurposing of the ‘Hindutva’ idea of India for Western societies as undertaken by diaspora communities. Lucid and topical, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of diaspora studies, migration studies, political studies, international relations, globalisation, political sociology, sociology and South Asia studies.

A deconstruction of the stereotypical depictions of the coolie in the British Empire.

This book studies Indian overseas labour migration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which involved millions of Indians traversing the globe in the age of empire, subsequent to the abolition of slavery in 1833. This migration led to the presence of Indians and their culture being felt all over the world. This study delves deep into the lives of these indentured workers from India who called themselves girmitiyas; it is a narrative of their experiences in India and in the sugar colonies abroad. It foregrounds the alternative world view of the girmitiyas, and their socio-cultural and religious life in the colonies. In this book, the author has developed highly original insights into the experience of colonial indentured migrant labour, describing the ways in which migrants managed to survive and even flourish within the interstices of the indentured labour system and how considerably the experience of migration changed over time.

Resource added for the Psychology (includes Sociology) 108091 courses.

This book unfolds the story of the indenture system within the British Empire, with India as the 'mother country' of coolies.

Professor Lal has been remarkably successful in combining scholarship with autobiography in Mr Tulsi’s Store. In the essays which cover the author’s childhood and education up to university, diligent scholarship combines with evocative autobiographical details to reveal a philosophical pattern that encompasses the experience of the descendants of all Indian indentured workers everywhere. Professor Frank Birbalsingh, York University, Canada.

"This book is an imaginative and valuable contribution to the literature on Indian immigration. The many new insights it provides are of such importance that one hopes it will serve as a model for work on other indentured colonial populations. It is a "ground breaking work", a basic contribution to the scholarly literature on Indians in Fiji, especially because its wealth of statistical information on the origins of the immigrants and its coverage of the formal structure of the system which brought them to Fiji"--Publisher's description.

Exploring the work of key writers from across the globe, this significant contribution to diaspora theory constitutes a major study of the literature and other cultural texts of the Indian diaspora.