Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities

(Note: Sample material is taken from uncorrected proofs. Changes may be made prior to publication.)

Indian Diaspora

Capsule Summary:
Location: Worldwide
Total Population: approximately 10 million
Language: Hindi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Bhojpuri, English, Creoles
Religion: Hindu, Muslim, Sikh

The Indian Diaspora refers to the dispersal over the past century of substantial numbers of people from the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan) to various western and non-western countries worldwide. Members of this diasporic population typically view themselves as ethnic others in their countries of settlement, reworking traditional forms of social custom, religious engagement, popular culture, and linguistic affiliation through collective interaction with their host societies. They also cultivate a shared sense of heritage and homeland through participation in community-based migrant organizations that facilitate the interactive flow of resources to and from their countries of origin. Although the origins of the Indian Diaspora may be traced to the colonial practices of the mid-nineteenth century, South Asian migration has reached unprecedented levels in the last few decades due to significant changes in the global political economy.

Indentured and Contract Labor, 1830 - 1920
The first phase of the Indian diaspora may be traced to the transcontinental movements of labor under the British colonial empire. The abolition of slavery in the European colonies during the nineteenth century prompted tropical plantation owners worldwide to seek new sources of affordable and efficient human labor. Beginning in 1834, the indentured labor system enabled plantation owners to procure cheap labor from the Indian subcontinent through arrangements with colonial authorities. According to this system, men and women recruited as laborers from the countryside would sign contracts of indenture to work for a certain number of years in one of the other colonial territories in return for basic pay, room, and board. Indentured laborers from India began to emigrate to cocoa and sugar plantations in Trinidad, Mauritius, and Guyana in the 1840s, Natal (South Africa) in the 1860s, Surinam in the 1870s, and Fiji in the 1880s. By the time that the system was formally abolished in 1918, there were nearly half a million Indian immigrants in Mauritius, a quarter million in Guyana, over a hundred thousand in Natal and Trinidad, and significant numbers in Fiji, Guadeloupe, Reunion, Jamaica, and East Africa. Approximately two-thirds of the indentured workers remained in their host colony after the expiration of their contracts.

Most indentured workers were recruited from Hindi-speaking North India, especially Bihar and the Northwest Provinces (Uttar Pradesh), although smaller numbers were also recruited from the Tamil and Telugu districts of South India. Tamil-speaking South Indians were far more likely to migrate regionally to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Burma, and Malaya, where their work on tea and rubber plantations continued until the 1930s. The great majority of the labor population were Hindu by religion, with significant numbers of Muslims as well. Punjabi Sikhs, rather than work as indentured servants, migrated to East and Central Africa in the 1890s to work as artisans and railway men.

As time progressed in the colonies, South Asian migrant populations began to emerge as distinct ethnic communities in each settlement site. Various factors contributed to these patterns of ethnic identification. Indentured laborers were largely unable to maintain close ties to their homeland because of their geographical distance from South Asia and their restricted movement while living under contract. At the same time, colonial management typically clustered all South Asians together in isolated rural enclaves under conditions which gradually disintegrated regional differences in dialect, caste, religious affiliation, and cultural tradition. Such groups thus experienced a high degree of linguistic creolization and cultural homogenization. The distinct economic niche of migrants in each location also played a role in forming ethnic communities. For example, plantation workers in Mauritius, South Africa, Fiji, and the Caribbean Islands became rural laborers and independent farmers in the sugar cane industries after the termination of their contracts. Migrants to East and Central Africa remained in the region as small shop-owners (dukawallahs) and professionals, while Indians in Southeast Asia filled privileged positions in the civil service.

The decades immediately following the abolition of indentured servitude saw some degree of free movement of people from South Asia to other countries. For example, Gujaratis in search of trading opportunities freely migrated in large numbers to East Africa in the early part of the twentieth century. However, the patterns of the Indian diaspora changed considerably during the era of decolonization following World War II.

Migration to Great Britain
Prior to Indian Independence, small numbers of students, sailors, and emissaries migrated to the imperial capital by exercising the right of all colonial subjects to travel to and settle in Britain. New types of migration occurred, however, during the post-war period of decolonization, as the British government began recruiting labor from its former colonies to fill vacancies in its industrial sectors resulting from substantial losses of young male soldiers. These South Asian workers typically followed an arrangement known as "chain migration," in which men from certain villages and districts (generally in Gujarat, Bengal, and the Punjab) would migrate to industrialized inner cities and share dormitory-style accommodations while searching for employment as semi-skilled laborers. As the national government began to restrict entry into Britain in the 1960s, many of these men decided to stay permanently in the country, sponsoring their immediate families and re-establishing their lives in this new context.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, various nationalist leaders in East and Central Africa began to pressure and, in the case of Uganda, forcibly expel South Asian migrants from their countries. Although some of these formerly indentured families returned to their home countries, many resettled as "twice migrants" in Canada and, especially, Great Britain. By 1981, there were more than 150,000 South Asians of East African origin living in Britain. The public anxiety and fear prompted by this influx of immigrants found expression in the extreme right-wing discourse of the National Front Party, which found a certain degree of popularity in the 1970s. As Canada and the United States began to relax their immigration policies in the 1980s, Great Britain continued to tighten its entry permit procedures through the years of the Thatcher administration.

Migration to the Gulf States
The oil boom of the early 1970s prompted the large movement of South Asian workers to the Gulf States, where the six oil-exporting countries (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Saudi Arabia) turned to contract migration to satisfy their rapidly increasing demand for expatriate labor. This movement occurred with little official coordination between the labor-sending and the labor-receiving nations, and official assessments of foreign immigration typically underestimate the actual numbers of workers. Unofficial estimates suggest that there were roughly 2 million Indians, 1.5 million Pakistanis, and 200,000 Bangladeshis in the Gulf States by the late 1980s. Given their access to substantially higher wages in the Gulf States, these South Asian laborers are able to remit much of their income to their families at home. However, their status on the margins of society makes them susceptible to legal abuses, particularly during times of social tension. This vulnerability is even higher for the tens of thousands of female domestic workers who have migrated from South Asia (Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) to the Gulf States, where their service is explicitly excluded from consideration by local labor laws.

Migration to the United States
The first phase of migration from South Asia to the United States occurred in the early part of the twentieth century as agriculturalists from Punjab, attracted by the possibility of labor in the lumber yards of the Pacific Northwest, began relocating to the American West. By 1914, there were approximately ten thousand migrants from South Asia working in California. Ultimately forced out of the labor markets, these predominantly Sikh workers pooled their resources and resumed their agricultural activities as landowning farmers in the valleys of California. Because U.S. immigration laws discouraged them from bringing families into the country, these men remained unmarried or settled with Mexican and Mexican-American women who labored in the California fields.

Due to increasingly restrictive immigration laws, the rate of South Asian immigration to the United States gradually declined after 1910, reaching very low levels during the 1930s and 1940s. Legislation passed in 1946 raised immigration quotas to the fixed rate of one hundred individuals annually from India and Pakistan combined. This modest pattern of immigration continued for the next several decades, such that the estimate of total Indian migration to the United States before 1964 is around 6,400.

A second phase of South Asian migration to the United States was prompted by the Immigration and Nationality Reform Act of 1965, legislation which facilitated the entrance of skilled professionals in search of educational and employment opportunities. Tightly screened for employability by immigration officials, these immigrants constitute part of a worldwide professional elite whose tendency to cluster in wealthy nations is commonly termed the "brain drain" of talent from developing countries such as India. These Indian Americans are perceived as a model minority, one of the most economically successful Asian immigrant communities in the country. The 1990 Census suggests that Indian Americans have very high levels of educational attainment, professional and managerial employment, household income, and family stability. Such socioeconomic measures suggest that these immigrants have secured financial prosperity and professional success.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1984 prompted a third phase of migration by eliminating the system of national origin quotas and establishing a system of preference based on the principles of family reunification. These changes enabled settled professionals to sponsor their family members through extensive use of preferential categories for independent relatives. Rates of immigration from South Asia accelerated, such that in 1991, nearly 80% of the 44,121 persons of Indian origin admitted into the United States were sponsored by family members. These sponsored relatives tend to find their first jobs in the unskilled manual categories of employment, although they exhibit a considerable degree of occupational diversification after several years in the country. According to the 2000 Census, the number of people identifying themselves as Asian Indians or Indian Americas in the United States has nearly doubled in the past decade to 1.7 million.

Migration to Canada
The first South Asians arrived on the western coast of Canada between 1900 and 1908, as several thousand predominantly Sikh agriculturalists from Punjab established a small but enduring migrant community amidst the lumber yards and farmlands of British Columbia. Subsequent legislative restrictions virtually eliminated the migration of South Asians into Canada for several decades. The rate of South Asian immigration drastically increased, however, in the 1960s with the implementation of immigration reforms giving preference to prosperous members of the professional classes. Substantial numbers of twice-migrants also entered Canada in the 1970s as political refugees from the former British colonies, particularly East Africa. The rate of immigration by South Asians and other "visible minorities" has continued to increase due to various changes in immigration policies since the 1980s, such that there are nearly half a million South Asians living in Canada, according to the 1996 Census. These South Asian migrants and twice-migrants have typically clustered together in the three main ports of entry - Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

National debates about immigration policy in Canada since the 1970s have revealed certain popular conceptions concerning the presence of South Asian and other immigrants in the country. Proponents of stricter immigration standards claim that immigrants are a burden on the national economy, draining the state's overburdened social security system and increasing unemployment among non-immigrant laborers. They also claim that the increased ethnic and religious diversity of the population will threaten Canadian national values. Immigration activists, however, highlight the economic and cultural contributions of immigrant communities. They point out that immigration encourages the growth of trade and industry, and many immigrants create economic opportunity through capital investment in land development and small business ownership. They also emphasize that tolerance for ethnic diversity is a fundamental characteristic of Canadian identity, as reflected by the official multiculturalism policy of the Canadian government. Despite the complexity of national attitudes towards ethnicity and diversity, South Asian immigrants have become a permanent part of the multicultural fabric of Canadian society.

Haley Duschinski

See also Diaspora

Further Reading

Bates, Crispin, editor, Community, Empire, and Migration: South Asians in Diaspora, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2001

Clarke, Colin, Ceri Peach, and Steven Vertovec, editors, South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990

Coward, Harold, John R. Hinnells, and Raymond Brady Williams, editors, The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada, and the United States, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000

Esses, Victoria M., and R.C. Gardner, "Multiculturalism in Canada: Context and Current Status," Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, Special Issue on Ethnic Relations in a Multicultural Society, 28, no. 3 (1996)

Kumar, Amitava, Passport Photos, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000

Lessinger, Johanna, From the Ganges to the Hudson: Indian Immigrants in New York City, Boston: Allen and Bacon, 1995

Northrup, David, Indentured Labour in the Age of Imperialism, 1983-1922, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995

Owen, Roger. Migrant Workers in the Gulf, London: Migrant Rights Group, 1986

Prashad, Vijay, The Karma of Brown Folk, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000

Tinker, Hugh, The Banyan Tree: Overseas Emigrants from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, London: Oxford University Press, 1977

Tinker, Hugh, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labor Overseas, 1830-1920, London: Oxford University Press, 1974

Van der Veer, Peter, editor, Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995

Samples