Indian Diaspora and the Prospect of Open Learning

Abstract

Modern Indian diaspora began in the third decade of the nineteenth century. In geopolitical terms it can be divided into the following zones: the Southeast Asian zone, the South West Indian Ocean (Mauritius, Reunion, Madagascar, and South and East Africa), the South Pacific (Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand), the Caribbean (especially Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Surinam), the North American (Canada and the USA), the European (U.K. and other European countries and the Gulf. It numbers about twenty-five million people. It is a valid question whether this diaspora can be thought of in singular or plural terms because, on the one hand, it is transnational, the whole of the South Asian sub-continent being the unified point of emigration, and, on the other hand, it is sub-national or regional (hence the Telegu, Malayalee, Tamilian, Gujarati, Sikh or Punjabi diaspora from India). The multiplicity is compounded if we look at the time periods (e.g., nineteenth and twentieth centuries diasporas), the voluntary or involuntary motivations of migration, the sex ratios involved and the occupational categories (labour, white collar, business, service etc.). Further complications arise if we take into account the present-day Government of India classification of the Indian people abroad: the NRIs (Non Resident Indians), those Indians abroad who either currently hold or have ever held an Indian passport, and the PIOs (People of Indian Origin), who are citizens of countries other than India but have had Indian progenitors up until certain generations (in this case up to four). However, cutting across all of these classifications, including the one that I suggested between the elementary and complex structures (Jain 1999), is the conceptual and analytical unity of the Indian diaspora, as indeed of all diasporas (including African Chinese and Jewish), as a “diaspora space” (cf Brah 1996, 208–10). Concretely, this diasporic space is evidenced, for example, in the twice-thrice or multiple migrations-the foot loose character of Indian and other diasporas.