This is a chapter in Maria del Mar Logrono Narbona, Paulo G. Pinto, John Tofik Karam (eds) Cresce... more This is a chapter in Maria del Mar Logrono Narbona, Paulo G. Pinto, John Tofik Karam (eds) Crescent over another Horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA , University of Texas Press 2015: 63-85
Examining high-skilled professionals of Indian origin who decide to return to India to settle dow... more Examining high-skilled professionals of Indian origin who decide to return to India to settle down in so-called gated estates or communities, which now form part of Indian mega cities’ landscape, this article describes the mobility regimes of these estates’ diverse populations in three South Indian cities and the power relations between these high-skilled professionals and their staff. We address the lacuna to study these estates as sites of human capital mobility convergence where international and regional migration and mobility patterns of the diverse groups become entangled and mutually constitutive. Combining theoretical models pertaining to skilled migration research as well as mobility studies and ethnographic description and analysis, we aim to conceptualise gated communities in a way that highlights not only the interconnectedness of local, regional, national and transnational migration, but also their correlation with different forms of (physical, social, cultural, economi...
Journal of Citizenship and Globalisation Studies, 2019
This paper explores the relationship between migration and integration policies in the Netherland... more This paper explores the relationship between migration and integration policies in the Netherlands, diaspora policies in India, and the transnational practices of Indian highly skilled migrants to the Netherlands. We employ anthropological transnational migration theories (e.g., Ong 1999; Levitt and Jaworsky 2007) to frame the dynamic interaction between a sending and a receiving country on the lives of migrants. This paper makes a unique contribution to migration literature by exploring the policies of both sending and receiving country in relation to ethnographic data on migrants. The international battle for brains has motivated states like the Netherlands and India to design flexible migration and citizenship policies for socially and economically desirable migrants. Flexible citizenship policies in the Netherlands are primarily concerned with individual and corporate rights and privileges, whereas Indian diaspora policies have been established around the premise of national ide...
Democracy has generally been understood the best remedy to prevent societal violence, as it gives... more Democracy has generally been understood the best remedy to prevent societal violence, as it gives different groups a channel to voice their interests and grievances. However, in this article, that focuses on the Chittagong Hills, which for many decades has formed one of the most violent spaces in Bangladesh, we argue that, in reality, democracy and violence can be two sides of the same coin. This is not to say that in Bangladesh, where full liberal democracy is not in place, ordinary citizens have no values and idea(l)s of democracy and citizenship. On the contrary, in order to make sense of the intricate connection between democratic idea(l)s, and violent imaginations and practices, we focus in particular on the process of what we call the vernacularisation of democratic politics. We connect this process to the appropriation of citizenship and nationalism, by ordinary but radically differently-positioned people, in their daily realities. We demonstrate that widely shared imaginatio...
Though initially planned in Fiji, the Government of India (afterwards 001) instead organised the ... more Though initially planned in Fiji, the Government of India (afterwards 001) instead organised the Seventh World Hindi Conference (WHC) in 2003 in Surinam. Among others, the 001 hoped that by holding the WHC in Paramaribo it would, 'help us to establish better relations between India and various Caribbean countries'. J.C. Sharma, Secretary Ministry of External Affairs (GO I) also expected that the conference would 'strengthen the global relation between all those people in the world who spoke a form ofHindi'.2 During the conference there was a hitch however when local participants started questioning the o..;jectives of the 001. Many Indian delegates, participants objected, seemed to mistake the World Hindi Conference for a World Hindu Conference.3 Some of the Hindostanis who we interviewed afterwards thought it a shame that India had been 'trying to export her own problems to the Caribbean'. They meant the edgy relationship between the Hindus and Muslims in India, which is generally referred to as the problem of 'communalism' .5 Interviewed participants from Surinam said that they had 'nothing to do with those communal problems that exist in India' and added that, 'Hindostanis here in Surinam have a very harmonious relationship among themselves and religion does not divide us like it divides people in India'. Indeed, during our ongoing research in Surinam, we are time and again struck by the fact that Muslims and Hindus are united by a firm ethnic consciousness more
This paper reviews India's interface with its diaspora from the early years of the last centu... more This paper reviews India's interface with its diaspora from the early years of the last century till September 2000 when the government adopted a new policy framework seeking stronger ties between the Indian diaspora and India. The earlier policy of 'studied indifference' has been gradually abandoned; instead the government has encouraged the construction of an 'Indian diaspora' which attempts to reterrorialise identities by consciously finding 'India' a place in the perception of People of Indian Origin (PIO) and seeking to rebuild roots.
ABSTRACT The people known as Garos, from the Garo Hills and adjacent (lowland) areas in India and... more ABSTRACT The people known as Garos, from the Garo Hills and adjacent (lowland) areas in India and Bangladesh, have never constituted one unified and self-defined in-group, although British colonial rule indeed produced a feeble notion of an imagined Garo community. Hence, the international border of 1947 formalized certain distinctions between hill Garos and lowlanders that had existed much longer, and gave a further impetus to the articulations of ethnic identities in different spaces. In recent years, however, we do see different attempts by the Garos to establish linkages across the border. This paper examines these processes of disconnection, exemplified by and through the international border, of unification (within the nation-state), and of (re)connection (across the border). We also try to show how the different strategies of the Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi states, in dealing with the populations in their borderlands, have impacted local processes of self-identification and self-assertion in significantly different ways, but with similar outcomes.
This is a chapter in Maria del Mar Logrono Narbona, Paulo G. Pinto, John Tofik Karam (eds) Cresce... more This is a chapter in Maria del Mar Logrono Narbona, Paulo G. Pinto, John Tofik Karam (eds) Crescent over another Horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA , University of Texas Press 2015: 63-85
Examining high-skilled professionals of Indian origin who decide to return to India to settle dow... more Examining high-skilled professionals of Indian origin who decide to return to India to settle down in so-called gated estates or communities, which now form part of Indian mega cities’ landscape, this article describes the mobility regimes of these estates’ diverse populations in three South Indian cities and the power relations between these high-skilled professionals and their staff. We address the lacuna to study these estates as sites of human capital mobility convergence where international and regional migration and mobility patterns of the diverse groups become entangled and mutually constitutive. Combining theoretical models pertaining to skilled migration research as well as mobility studies and ethnographic description and analysis, we aim to conceptualise gated communities in a way that highlights not only the interconnectedness of local, regional, national and transnational migration, but also their correlation with different forms of (physical, social, cultural, economi...
Journal of Citizenship and Globalisation Studies, 2019
This paper explores the relationship between migration and integration policies in the Netherland... more This paper explores the relationship between migration and integration policies in the Netherlands, diaspora policies in India, and the transnational practices of Indian highly skilled migrants to the Netherlands. We employ anthropological transnational migration theories (e.g., Ong 1999; Levitt and Jaworsky 2007) to frame the dynamic interaction between a sending and a receiving country on the lives of migrants. This paper makes a unique contribution to migration literature by exploring the policies of both sending and receiving country in relation to ethnographic data on migrants. The international battle for brains has motivated states like the Netherlands and India to design flexible migration and citizenship policies for socially and economically desirable migrants. Flexible citizenship policies in the Netherlands are primarily concerned with individual and corporate rights and privileges, whereas Indian diaspora policies have been established around the premise of national ide...
Democracy has generally been understood the best remedy to prevent societal violence, as it gives... more Democracy has generally been understood the best remedy to prevent societal violence, as it gives different groups a channel to voice their interests and grievances. However, in this article, that focuses on the Chittagong Hills, which for many decades has formed one of the most violent spaces in Bangladesh, we argue that, in reality, democracy and violence can be two sides of the same coin. This is not to say that in Bangladesh, where full liberal democracy is not in place, ordinary citizens have no values and idea(l)s of democracy and citizenship. On the contrary, in order to make sense of the intricate connection between democratic idea(l)s, and violent imaginations and practices, we focus in particular on the process of what we call the vernacularisation of democratic politics. We connect this process to the appropriation of citizenship and nationalism, by ordinary but radically differently-positioned people, in their daily realities. We demonstrate that widely shared imaginatio...
Though initially planned in Fiji, the Government of India (afterwards 001) instead organised the ... more Though initially planned in Fiji, the Government of India (afterwards 001) instead organised the Seventh World Hindi Conference (WHC) in 2003 in Surinam. Among others, the 001 hoped that by holding the WHC in Paramaribo it would, 'help us to establish better relations between India and various Caribbean countries'. J.C. Sharma, Secretary Ministry of External Affairs (GO I) also expected that the conference would 'strengthen the global relation between all those people in the world who spoke a form ofHindi'.2 During the conference there was a hitch however when local participants started questioning the o..;jectives of the 001. Many Indian delegates, participants objected, seemed to mistake the World Hindi Conference for a World Hindu Conference.3 Some of the Hindostanis who we interviewed afterwards thought it a shame that India had been 'trying to export her own problems to the Caribbean'. They meant the edgy relationship between the Hindus and Muslims in India, which is generally referred to as the problem of 'communalism' .5 Interviewed participants from Surinam said that they had 'nothing to do with those communal problems that exist in India' and added that, 'Hindostanis here in Surinam have a very harmonious relationship among themselves and religion does not divide us like it divides people in India'. Indeed, during our ongoing research in Surinam, we are time and again struck by the fact that Muslims and Hindus are united by a firm ethnic consciousness more
This paper reviews India's interface with its diaspora from the early years of the last centu... more This paper reviews India's interface with its diaspora from the early years of the last century till September 2000 when the government adopted a new policy framework seeking stronger ties between the Indian diaspora and India. The earlier policy of 'studied indifference' has been gradually abandoned; instead the government has encouraged the construction of an 'Indian diaspora' which attempts to reterrorialise identities by consciously finding 'India' a place in the perception of People of Indian Origin (PIO) and seeking to rebuild roots.
ABSTRACT The people known as Garos, from the Garo Hills and adjacent (lowland) areas in India and... more ABSTRACT The people known as Garos, from the Garo Hills and adjacent (lowland) areas in India and Bangladesh, have never constituted one unified and self-defined in-group, although British colonial rule indeed produced a feeble notion of an imagined Garo community. Hence, the international border of 1947 formalized certain distinctions between hill Garos and lowlanders that had existed much longer, and gave a further impetus to the articulations of ethnic identities in different spaces. In recent years, however, we do see different attempts by the Garos to establish linkages across the border. This paper examines these processes of disconnection, exemplified by and through the international border, of unification (within the nation-state), and of (re)connection (across the border). We also try to show how the different strategies of the Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi states, in dealing with the populations in their borderlands, have impacted local processes of self-identification and self-assertion in significantly different ways, but with similar outcomes.
The recent history of the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh is marked by ongoing conflicts between m... more The recent history of the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh is marked by ongoing conflicts between minority (non-Muslim and non-Bengali) locals and state-sponsored (Bengali Muslim) immigrants. In general, these immigrants are framed as land grabbers who have been receiving protection from a pro-Bengali military force. We propose instead, that the understanding of these Bengalis as a homogenous category of mobile perpetrators fails to take into account their complex histories as mobile landless peasants. Our ethnographic research reveals that the framing of the local minorities and the mobile Bengalis as two antagonistic categories with opposing interests obscures the fact that both categories have fallen victim to very similar regimes of mobilities and immobilities of the state and national and local (political, economic and military) elites. Here, we reject binary thinking that counterpoises mobility and immobility as two antagonistic concepts and argue that mobility and immobility are intrinsically related and their relationship is asymmetrical.
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Papers by Ellen Bal