The Indian state's relationship with its overseas residents has been extensively theorized. This literature primarily addresses the significance of remittances and knowledge, which are channelled back to the homeland through its middle-class NRIs (non-resident Indians). In these formulations, low-wage migrants are often left out. Analysis of low-wage migrants' relationship to India is instead limited to macroeconomic formulations at village/state levels, anthropological accounts of reintegration and quotidian experiences of living abroad. Their relationship as transnational subjects caught between regimes of sending and receiving countries has yet to be effectively addressed. Based on fieldwork conducted in Dubai in 2008, this paper demonstrates that this group is largely excluded from initiatives of non-resident citizen benefits, while constructed primarily as empowered free agents in a capitalist global economy. This results in a situation where neo-liberal markets are assumed to effectively regulate labour, and sending and receiving nations abdicate responsibility for ensuring rights and welfare of the migrant. However, both countries continue to reap economic benefits of their labour as productive subjects.

Introduction

In current academic as well as popular and media discourses, much has been made of India's recent “rise.” In addition to the subcontinent's rapid economic growth, significant attention has been paid to ethnic Indians living outside the country's borders while contributing to its cultural as well as economic influence. With an estimated twenty million people of Indian origin living outside the country today, their relevance in developing understandings of the Indian nation-state as well as of transnational communities should not be overlooked. This research, in bringing those two elements together, shows that the Indian state is often discriminatory in providing for the welfare of its overseas citizens. While middle-class NRIs are courted through investment policies and visa categories to maintain cultural and economic links with the motherland, the less privileged migrant is relatively neglected in terms of welfare and rights provisions.

The Diasporic Communities and the Films

The global population of Indians overseas is estimated at over 17 million. Of these over 2.5 million are estimated to be in the United States (constituting 0.92 per cent of the US population), while Singapore's Indian population constitutes officially 9.2 per cent of the nation's population, including citizens, permanent residents (over 330,000) and expatriate workers (over 100,000). The global population of Chinese overseas is estimated at 40 million, over twice the number of overseas Indians. An estimated 30 million are living in Southeast Asia, while in the United States persons of Chinese descent number approximately 3.6 million, comprising 1.2 per cent of the US population.

Both these populations were subject to the global demands for migrant labour in the nineteenth century, when the colonial powers took workers as indentured labour to other colonies – to work on plantations and in mines, and in some cases to assist in junior administrative posts. Many of these migrant workers did not return, making these new lands their home. Political and economic instabilities of the post-colonial era created the next wave of migration from both countries. It is the latter group of migrants during the last six decades who have kept close ties with the motherland, particularly in the Indian case. The communities of Indians and Chinese overseas, old and recent, provide both the subject matter as well as the audiences for films that depict the Indian and Chinese diasporic communities.

Members of diasporic communities often struggle with their identities. Are they Indian, Indian-American, or American, Chinese, American-Chinese, Fijian, Fijian-Indian, Canadian, Canadian-Chinese, and so on? What makes a person living in North America, for instance, Indian or Chinese? Is it their parentage, their values, the food they eat, the language they speak (or are expected to speak at home)? Is it in their blood? Is it their ethnicity? Is it their culture? Are they American in their homeland, and Indian or Chinese in North America? Are they foreign everywhere? Much scholarly work has been done on multicultural identities in overseas communities.

Migrations and transnational interactions carry with them numerous tales of differences and dilemmas, conflicts and coercion, encounters and integration. The traditional boundaries of language, culture and ethnicity are challenged and negotiated to yield newer forms of identity and consciousness, which thrive with their own sense of uniqueness and integrity. The increasing mobility of large-scale flows of capital, goods and people brings to the fore the complexities of transnational players on the regional, national and international levels. The “post-colonial deconstruction of residual Eurocentric epistemologies,” as argued by some scholars, also brings in the question whether the “post-Westphalian” era “marks the end of the nation-state.” The complexities of spatial identities that then arise need to be addressed in multidisciplinary paradigms. Recent works in the humanities and social sciences have highlighted the importance of researching these interactions in various forms and over diverse geographical spaces. While a number of researches have been published on individual diasporas, there are few examples which incorporate a comparative approach among the diasporas in terms of lived spaces, economic networks, cultural interactions or religious synergies. This volume deals with two of the largest diasporas in the world: overseas Chinese, reportedly forty million–strong worldwide, and overseas Indians, who are said to number a little over half that at approximately twenty-two million.

Though diverse geopolitical spaces have been addressed in this volume, the main focus has been the Southeast Asian region, as can be seen from the larger number of articles in that section. This region constitutes a veritable “contact zone” for the two communities, with centuries of interaction providing a fertile ground for a comparative framework and opportunities to explore the relationship between India and China through their respective diasporas. This regional focus also emphasizes how the notions of migration, diaspora and cultural contact have constituted the core of the Southeast Asian identity.

Introduction

Religion and its practice is an expression of diasporic behaviour, and its multicultural relevance at both the social and political levels is truly the best tool to study any community or country with a huge migrant population. In the case of Singapore and Malaysia through the colonial days, their multicultural population historically has demonstrated religious tolerance, which has enabled the Hindu community to practice its religious festivals even to this day. This paper will focus on the survival, evolution and modifications these festivals, and in particular their public expression through festival processions, have undergone compared to how they were practiced in their place of origin in India. Processions are subject to innovations and their purpose can also change. This paper examines the cultural and social aspects of the practice and examines the expression of devotion to Murukan among Indian and Chinese devotees as observed during processions and ritual practices for the celebration of the kavadi festival Thaipusam in Singapore, Malacca and Penang, as well as to Mariamman during Theemithi in Singapore. Thaipusam, celebrated in the month of Thai in the Hindu calendar (occurring January–February in the Gregorian calendar), is a thanksgiving festival dedicated to the Hindu god Murukan involving asceticism and control over ones senses, while Theemithi is a ritual street theatre performance culminating in walking on burning coal.

This study analyses the way piety is expressed among worshippers observing these festivals and what inspires this piety. Many of the practices around Murukan worship are connected to the Indian diaspora that brought ritual worship to British Malaya in the nineteenth century. Many were plantation workers who brought their folk practices from the villages of Tamil Nadu and practised them in Singapore and parts of Malaysia. When and how the expression of faith went beyond the kampong and the Indian fold and started attracting other races, especially the Chinese, requires more in-depth research.

This book explores the history and evolution of Deobandi Islam, a South Asian Sunni sect whose origin dates back to 1866 when a madrassah movement was launched in the small North Indian town of Deoband. Since its inception, Deobandi Islam has survived and spread mainly through its madrassah network, which has produced Deobandi prayer leaders, preachers and politicians on the one hand and has paved the way for the creation of extremist Deobandi organizations like the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Jhangwi on the other. The latter role of the Deobandi movement makes it all the more relevant in the present scenario, whereby a global wave of extremism and terrorism has seriously threatened world peace.

Unlike the existing literature that has studied the Deobandi movement in the context of political Islam and religious reform, this book endeavours to interpret this madrassah-based movement from a countercultural perspective. By employing an offbeat approach, this book tries to explain the background of the perennial conflict between the Deobandi sect and mainstream Muslim society in the subcontinent. An attempt has also been made to identify the countercultural currents in the 150-year-long history of the Deobandi movement. In addition to that, a comparative analysis of the values and attitudes of the students of a Deobandi madrassah and a mainstream educational institution has been included to underline the countercultural mindset of Deobandi Islam. In its concluding section, the book looks at some probable scenarios with respect to the future of Deobandi Islam as a counterculture.

The main objective of this work is to understand Deobandi Islam from a different perspective. This work is expected to be of ample interest and importance to the intelligentsia and academia on the one hand and politicians and policymakers on the other. By giving an insight into the making of the mindset of the Deobandi Taliban, this work also hopes to add considerable value to the on going policymaking process vis-à-vis the future of the Pak-Afghan region, especially after the withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan.

“One thing Zachary did know about the Ibis,” Amitav Ghosh writes in his novel Sea of Poppies, “was that she had been built to serve as a ‘blackbirder,’ for transporting slaves. […] As with many another slave-ship, the schooner's new owner had acquired her with an eye to fitting her for a different trade: the export of opium.” It is not until the Ibis reaches the river Hooghly that Zachary Reid, the son of a Maryland freedwoman, encounters Ben Burnham, the ship's new owner. Burnham informs young Zachary that the Ibis will not carry opium on its first voyage as the Chinese are having difficulty understanding the benefits of free trade. Instead, the vessel will do just the kind of work she was intended for. “D'ya mean to use her as a slaver, sir? But have not your English laws outlawed that trade?” a startled Zachary asks. Burnham replies that those who would stop at nothing to halt the march of human freedom have indeed outlawed the trade. “Well sir,” Zachary demurs, “if slavery is freedom then I'm glad I don't have to make a meal of it. Whips and chains are not much to my taste.” But Burnham reassures him; the Ibis will carry not slaves, but coolies. “Have you not heard it said that when God closes one door he opens another? When the doors of freedom were closed to the African, the Lord opened them to a tribe that was yet more needful of it – the Asiatick.”

Burnham's “doors of freedom” would remain open to African and Asiatic alike long after the formal abolition of slavery and the slave trade in various colonial territories. The stuff of self-congratulatory anniversaries and observances of expiation – the cleansing of collective guilt – the dates of declaratory promises of freedom for enslaved peoples hold little substantive meaning for historians.

The objective of this chapter is to highlight the conflict between the DMM and the majority of Muslims in Pakistan. Unlike the previous chapters that identified the presence of countercultural tendencies in the history of the DMM, this chapter presents a direct comparison of the values and practices of folk Islam with those of Deobandi Islam. The chapter elaborates how the DMM has employed the theology of Islam to condemn and castigate the established religious and sociocultural beliefs and practices of mainstream Muslim society in Pakistan.

As mentioned in the introduction to this book, a large majority of Pakistani Muslims follow folk Islam – a charitable version of Islam broadly linked to spiritual and sufi traditions. For this work, folk Islam represents mainstream Muslim society, whereas the Deobandi sect, followed by about 20 per cent Pakistani Muslims, epitomizes a counterculture. The current chapter identifies the most prominent beliefs and practices of folk Islam as well as popular customs that have been condemned by the Deobandis. The chapter not only presents the arguments of Deobandi scholars in this regard but also compares their views with the perspectives of non-Deobandi ulama, mostly from the Barelwi sect that generally represents folk Islam in Pakistan. The latter viewpoint has been included to highlight the justification and continuation of these beliefs and practices by the majority of Pakistani Muslims.

For this discourse on the DMM's countercultural approach, the views and fatawa of three prominent Deobandi scholars – Ashraf Ali Thanvi (1863–1943), Abdul Haq (1912–88) and Yousaf Ludhianvi (1932–2000) – have been selected to represent the Deobandi persuasion.

Introduction

The extraordinary variations presented by the ethnic structures of Southeast Asia make an interesting and complex area of research. The historical legacies, local cultures and traditions contribute to distinguish the Asian cities from their Western counterparts, and each in turn with particularities of their own. In the larger background of the multicultural social setting in Singapore, a predominantly ethnic Indian population in the landscape of Little India presents a fascinating dimension of shared “community space” as well as various aspects of “competing multiculturalisms” in a rapidly growing Asian city. If diasporic communities attempt to recreate a sociocultural version of their homeland in their memory and imagination, no other setting could be more pertinent than the visual construct of Little India in Singapore. It presents to us all the elements of being Indian – saris, sweets, spices, flowers, deities, Indian provisions, utensils and gold ornaments! Though the area is dominated by migrants from South India as manifested by the Tamil lingua franca and most of the available consumer products in the area, it is also frequented by the migrants and expatriates from North India and other parts of the Indian subcontinent. There are also a few well-established North Indian businesses in the area, like the Mustafa Centre and Meena Gold Jewellery. The common grounds in products and preferences as well as in the sharing of community space have been comfortably worked out between businessmen and the general ethnic Indian clientele. They manage to fit in quite well in the negotiation of their demands and supplies of everyday culinary ingredients, provisions, necessities of religious obligations and festive decorations. However, the overall impact of the whiffs of Indian cuisine, incense sticks, flowers and garlands and the blaring Indian movie songs undoubtedly have a mesmerizing effect, transporting one to some place in India until one suddenly hears “ok, la!” and is jolted back to the reality of an interactive shared space in Singapore.

This chapter establishes the case that the DMM continued what Shah Waliullah began. It also explains that some countercultural currents were present in his movement, but these were overshadowed by its larger intellectual canvas. Those countercultural trends gradually became more prominent after Waliullah's death, when a ‘practical’ rather than intellectual tradition became dominant. This chapter argues that the DMM was the continuation of the ‘practical’ version of Waliullah's movement. Finally, the chapter suggests that the DMM's intellectual decline brought forward the countercultural countenance of the movement, which came into conflict with several social and cultural norms and values of mainstream Muslim society in India.

Shah Waliullah's Movement

Shah Waliullah (1703–63) was born in Delhi four years before the death of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, whose death is considered to mark the beginning of the end of Muslim rule in India. In the fifty years following Aurangzeb's death, the Delhi court saw ten emperors, only four of whom died a natural death (Mian 1988, 76). As the palace intrigues weakened the central authority of the Mughal Empire, many regional power centres sprang up in India. Marathas took control of South India and later also gained influence in the Delhi court after their victory against the Mughals in 1736 (Mian 1988, 86). Rohailas set up their government north-east of Delhi, while Sikhs became strong in North West India (Abbott 1962). In 1737, Afghan ruler Nadir Shah attacked and looted Delhi, killing thousands of people. After that attack, North West India and Punjab were completely cut off from the Delhi sultanate. On the eastern front, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa also severed ties with the central government of Delhi. These regions were later occupied by the British East India Company after the Plassi war in 1757 (Mian 1957, vol. 2, 36–7).

Writing from his base in South Africa in 1905, Mahatma Gandhi commented on the position of Indian and Chinese migration to Singapore. “Singapore can be said to be as near to the Chinese as it is to us. […] Despite this,” Gandhi lamented, “our people there cannot hold their own against the Chinese.” Chinese were wealthier than Indians in Singapore, and – Gandhi was at pains to point out – “some even own motor cars.” Gandhi then provided the readers of Indian Opinion with comparative statistics, showing that the number of Chinese arrivals in Singapore was nearly ten times greater than the number of Indian arrivals. These statistics led Gandhi to observe that “this shows how much is yet to be achieved by our people in the matter of emigration to, and settling in, foreign territories.” “It is a shame,” Gandhi concluded, “that we cannot keep abreast of the Chinese.”

More than anywhere else in the world, the Straits Settlements and Malaya provided a meeting ground for the Indian and Chinese diasporas in Asia. Overall, more Chinese journeyed to Malaya than to any single destination in the world between 1840 and 1940: around eleven million in all. Malaya, similarly, attracted more Indian emigrants (around four million) than any other territories except Burma and Ceylon. This chapter examines that Indian labour diaspora in Malaya, paying particular attention to the comparisons that were made – at the time and subsequently – with their Chinese counterparts.

The starting point for the chapter is my recent research on Tamil diasporas in Southeast Asia. In the course of this work, I have confronted constantly the problem of comparison with the concurrent history of Chinese migration: a comparison that is not merely analytically interesting, but one that suffuses the historical record. British colonial officials and Indian and Chinese intellectuals made constant comparisons at the time between Indian and Chinese migration.

Introduction

The historical and contemporary migrations of peoples from China and India are major movements of people that have changed the world significantly. Such migrations have shown similar and diverse processes. This paper will discuss some of these processes – namely, migration and remigration, localization, reproduction of traditions, and transnationalism and identity. An important process of transnationalism is the transnational connection between the diasporas and China and India respectively. And in these transnational connections, kinship and religion play important roles, further influencing the reproduction of traditions and identities.

Chinese in global distribution – and I am using the term here instead of diaspora (see below) – are more numerous than people of South Asian origins. But both the Chinese and Indians in global distribution form very significant populations that have a lot of impact worldwide as well as in China and South Asian countries. Both Chinese and Indian populations worldwide deserve serious comparative study, rather than just being studied separately. There is much to learn from such a study about migration, cultural life, economy and ethnicity.

Concept of Diaspora

The concept of diaspora has become popular in the humanities and social sciences since the 1990s. While some scholars still feel uncomfortable about using this term to refer to migrant settlers and their descendants in different parts of the world, the term has by now assumed quite a common usage. In the study of Chinese overseas, Wang Gungwu and other ethnic Chinese scholars from Southeast Asia have expressed reservations about the use of the term for Chinese overseas who have identified with their respective home countries rather than with China. The term evokes the image of the Jewish dispersal and their identification with their Jewish homeland even though, as pointed out by Robin Cohen, diaspora in its original Greek usage was quite positive, being associated with expansion through trade, military conquest and settlement. Most scholars who use the term today to refer to migrant settlers generally do not mean to equate them with the Jewish diaspora.

1. Greetings and introduction.

2. Brief information about the research and its objectives.

3. Verbal consent of the interviewee.

4. Personal information about the interviewee (name, age, place of residence).

5. How do you look at the cultural values and customs in Pakistan especially with respect to marriage, death, birthday events, dress, etc.? Are these values in conflict with Islam?

6. Do you watch television and use the Internet? If not, why?

7. What do you think about the political system in Pakistan and what, in your opinion, is the best system of governance and how can it be introduced in Pakistan?

8. What do you think about the education system in Pakistan and how do you compare the madaris with the mainstream education system?

9. What are your views about sufism /spiritualism in Islam? How do you look at the practice of visiting shrines of saints?

10. What are your views about the suicide attacks and bombings in Pakistan?

11. What do you think about the current status and role of women in Pakistani society?

12. What are your views on Pakistan's foreign policy especially with reference to India, Afghanistan, Europe, the United States and the Muslim world?

13. What are the three biggest challenges faced by Pakistan and what solutions do you recommend?

14. What are the major differences between madrassah and college students?

With the continuous development of China's economy, more and more foreigners have come to China as short-term visitors or travellers. Meanwhile, an increasing number of foreigners have settled down or set up enterprises in the local area. Among them, Indians have become a noticeable group with a rising population. The last ten years have witnessed the immigration to and settlement in China of people from developing countries and the phenomenon is becoming increasingly intense. Migrants have swarmed into China because, from their point of view, China is a “paradise” full of opportunities: free and open, safe and friendly, and convenient and easy to make money in. Running at the forefront of China's reform of opening up and as one of the most economically developed areas, Guangdong has always fascinated foreign migrants and investors. Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong Province, is especially appealing to them, being renowned as an international metropolitan city and an exciting economic hub. Nowadays, foreigners can be seen everywhere on the streets of Guangzhou. Among them, the proportion of migrants from developing countries is expanding and their number has surpassed that from developed countries. There are many foreigners living in residential districts, as well as in the outskirts of Guangzhou. The increase of immigration from developing countries has not only brought vitality to the Guangdong economy, but also resulted in many problems. Many of these people are illegal migrants and overstayers engaged in criminal activities. The Indian migrants are different from migrants from both developing and developed countries. This group presents its own characteristics which are worthy of special attention.

This paper aims to provide a systematic and comprehensive description of the Indian migrants in Guangzhou and its vicinity on the basis of fieldwork. There are many Indians living in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Zhongshan and Sanshui. Due to Sanshui's proximity to Guangzhou, the livelihood and business activities of Indians living there can be regarded as part of the larger Guangzhou metropolis.

Introduction

Scholars from several disciplinary perspectives have discussed the issue of ethnic and cultural identity among “diasporic” and immigrant communities. Stuart Hall, for example, offers two ways of looking at cultural identity. “The first position,” he writes, “defines ‘cultural identity’ in terms of one, shared culture, a sort of collective ‘one true self,’ hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed ‘selves,’ which people with a shared history and ancestry hold common.” The second definition, Hall notes, recognizes that “there are also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute ‘what we really are’ or rather – since history has intervened – ‘what we have become.’”

This issue of defining cultural identity is relevant for examining who, in a wider diasporic context, is “Chinese” and, in a specifically Indian context, who is a “Chinese-Indian” or “Indian-Chinese”? But it should be noted, as Tan Chee-Beng points out, that there is a

During the early history of China, the region around the Yellow River Valley formed the core of Chinese civilization. It was around this area, during most part of the first millennium BCE, that the concept of a common culture, comprising shared behaviour, institutions, and beliefs, was formulated. This was the place to which Han Chinese in general trace their descent, specifically to the legendary Yellow Emperor. With the teachings of Confucius officially propagated during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) and the standardization of the script before that, a sense of homogeneity and core Han Chinese culture took shape, and, according to Myron L. Cohen, “a unified culture” that “provided standards according to which people identified themselves as Chinese” developed.

There are many grounds for drawing comparisons between overseas Indian and Chinese communities, particularly those that emerged in the colonial era. Major dislocations and changes in socio-economic conditions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in these countries gave rise to huge outflows of population. Indian and Chinese communities came to be established not just in neighbouring regions of Asia but also in far-flung regions of the world, in the Pacific and Caribbean islands, in Europe and Africa, and in North, Central and South America. Apart from the traditional presence of merchants, indentured labour was a predominant feature of these communities: the conditions under which Indian and Chinese labour were recruited and transported overseas and under which they toiled were essentially the same. The laws governing their immigration into foreign countries and the discrimination they faced there were also similar in nature.

However, the Indian community in China in the colonial era differed from the general pattern of overseas Indian and Chinese communities in one major respect: it consisted of a high proportion of men from the security services – soldiers, policemen and watchmen. Particularly after the 1880s, anywhere from 50–85 per cent of the Indians in Hong Kong, Shanghai and the treaty ports of East China came from this category. This pattern was not replicated in virtually any other Indian or Chinese immigrant community.

This paper explores why the Indian community in China in the colonial period consisted of such a high proportion of soldiers, policemen and watchmen. In particular, what brought such a large number of young males from the rural areas of particular districts of Punjab province to China? What sustained this trend of migration for so many decades, and what brought it to an abrupt end in the 1940s? The paper will also examine the role of China as a transit point for these Indians, as they sought to migrate to other parts of the world, and also when they sought to return to India for economic or political reasons.