Locations for South Asian Diasporas

Author(s): Sandhya Shukla

Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 30 (2001), pp. 551-572
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 Annu. Rev. Anthropol.2001. 30:551-72
Copyright() 2001 by AnnualReviews. All rightsreserved

FORSOUTH ASIAN DIASPORAS

LOCATIONS

SandhyaShukla
Departmentof Anthropology,ColumbiaUniversity,New York,NY 10027;
e-mail: srs52@columbia.edu

Key Words migration,nationalism,postcolonialformations,raceandethnicity,

identity
* Abstract Thisreviewexplorestheculturalconsequencesof migrationsfromthe
Indiansubcontinentfor interdisciplinary inquiriesinto differenceand belonging.It
poses thequestionof whethertheconstructedtermSouthAsiancan adequatelybridge
the divide betweenmore internationalist conceptionsof diasporaand nationalistac-
countsof racialandethnicformation,andif so, whetherit createsnew epistemologies
fortheconsiderationof migrationin highlyglobalizedpoliticalandeconomicarrange-
ments.Inarguingthatmultipleformationsof nationalitytakeplacein diasporicculture,
thisreviewalso intervenesin debatesin anthropologyaboutthe geographicalandcon-
ceptualboundariesof community.Finally,in suggestingthat gender,sexuality,and
generationmightprofoundlyfissureSouthAsianandotherdiasporas,thearticleraises
the questionof the implicitlimitsof anycategoryof locationor identity.

INTRODUCTION

The subject of diasporaimmediatelyelicits basic questions of origins and loca-

tions. Wheredo people come from?Wheredo they pause, rest, live? Whatroutes
have they traveled?And yet the real andimaginedworldsof all peoples, especially
migrantpeoples, have proven far too complex and contradictoryto be easily ser-
viced by any attemptto respondin the singularto such compelling questions. In
fact, diasporiccultures,of South Asians and others,resist singularityof location,
or of origin, for that matter.And so it is not surprisingthat the publishedcollec-
tions of work on SouthAsian diasporasaremarkedlybroadin geographicalreach,
across nations and continents(Clarkeet al 1990, Vander Veer 1995, Bates 2001,
Rukmani 1999, Petievich 1999). Diaspora,by definition,is dispersion,which ef-
fectively compressestime and space such thatit enables the experiencesof many
places at what would appearto be one moment.And today such multiplicityand
simultaneityhavebecome particularlypronounced(Appadurai1996, Sassen 1998,
Schilleret al 1994, Kearney1995). Homeland,landof settlement,space for travel,
all undergosignificantreworkingthroughthe concept and object of diaspora.
This article seeks to map out the social and theoreticalarrangementsof South
Asian diasporas.In assumingthe task of explaininga categorythatis by no means
seamlessly constructed,I pay special attentionto the variousstrandsthatcomprise
0084-6570/01/1021-055 1$14.00 551
552 SHUKLA

this subjectmatter,regionally,generationally,and conceptually.Creatinga sense

of being Indianabroador participatingin pan-Islamicproductionsof culture,for
example,mayeach autonomouslyanddifferentlyrelateto "SouthAsian diasporas"
while contributingto a broaderepistemology of nationalityand subjectivity.This
is to say thatwithinthe very topic of diasporathereis an immanenttensionbetween
the specific and the general that may be variously renderedas the local and the
global, the particularand the universal,or the nationaland the regional.
One way to thinkabouta constitutivedynamicof these SouthAsian, andother,
diasporas,is throughJones's (1968) notion of a "changingsame."Jones has con-
sideredAfricanAmericanmusic as simultaneouslyreprisingAfricantraditionsand
evincinganembeddednessin theirnationalcontextof the UnitedStates.The mean-
ing of the music Jones interpretslies very much in its performance,which is every
time a new occurrence,but which also makesvivid otherimaginativeworldsfrom
which it gaineda particularenergy.Gilroy (1993) has used the "changingsame"to
describehis own projectof explainingblackdiasporiccultures.I wouldsuggestthat
this concept enables an interventioninto anthropologicaldebates about cultural
continuityandchange.It illuminates,for ourpurposes,the apparentparadoxof the
amazingpersistenceof SouthAsian traditionsandforms of expressionaroundthe
world and the increasedvisibility of innovativerenderingsof national,regional,
andreligiousidentitiesunderthe sign of "SouthAsianness,""Indianness,"or even
"Islam."Things stay the same and they change in South Asian as well as other
diasporas.To faithfullymaintainthe dualityof thatfundamentaltruism,though,is
to resist the reductionof any culturalmomentto nationalor homelanddifference.
A movementbetween differentordersof SouthAsian diasporascan be charted
in disciplinaryterms, too. Situatedwithin a range of imagined and real nations,
SouthAsian diasporasembody a set of disconnectionsbetweenplace, culture,and
identity (Gupta& Ferguson 1997). Just as life experiences, imaginativeinclina-
tions, andpsychic investmentslie outside observedgeographicalboundaries,they
are expressedthroughword and text in a varietyof forms. Imaginaries,in social
life or fictionalnarrative,are a centralfact of diasporasthroughtime and in this
articleareexploredas takingshapenot only in anthropologybutacrossotherfields
of study as well.
In the ways that South Asian diasporasare comprisedof stories aboutculture,
identity,and nation,they offer an often misleadingcoherenceor stabilityto cate-
gories thathave real power in the lives of manypeoples, but nonethelessthatneed
considerableunraveling.And so it is Foucault's (1972) basic charge of taking
discursiveformationsseriouslythat animatesthis closer look at diasporas.

HISTORIES AND CONCEPTS

The assertionof peoplehoodthatis basic to the expressionof SouthAsian diasporas

producesa range of analytic dilemmas, not least of which is a kind of essential-
izing of character,identity,and inclination.In some sense this is the fundamental
 SOUTHASIANDIASPORAS 553

problematicof subjectivitiesthat are cast in the languages of race and ethnicity

(Cohen 1978). It is difficult to describe difference-inside or outside a broadly
constituted entity such as nation or transnation-without reifying the bound-
aries of that differencethroughcolor, caste, religion, or, even more ambiguously,
"culture."Such issues premise importantcritiquesof anthropologyas well as of
more interdisciplinaryfields, such as ethnic studies (Lowe 1996).
But in its ever-presentindicationof the experience of displacement,the term
diasporais able to signify, constantly,multiplicity:of origins, cultures,nations,
forms (Cohen 1997). And the groupingof "SouthAsian," too, as a geographical
reference that does not have nation or religion in its root meaning, constructs
a highly provisional language, a kind of theory itself, for thinking about how
people see themselves as partof broadersocial formations.The termSouth Asian
diasporas connotes peoples who have at some time in the past come from all
the countriesthat comprise the Indiansubcontinent,yet withoutthe emphasis on
forced expulsion that Jewish or black diasporashave conveyed (Boyarin 1992,
Gilroy 1993). Although time and origins may remain maddeninglyambiguous
for this topic, they also constituterich analyticalterrainfor the considerationof
SouthAsian subjectivitybecausethe obviousconstructednessitself of SouthAsian
diasporasallows for interestingpossibilities, for alliances and allegiances across
national boundariesthat help us create new conceptual models for the complex
renderingsof affect and experience.
As peoples from South Asian countriesmove aroundthe world, they carry a
repertoireof images andexperiencesfromthe pastandpresentthatmeet alternative
narrativeproductionsin new places of settlement. Postcolonialism, racial and
ethnic formation,and globalization might be seen as three kinds of structuring
narrativeswith which SouthAsian diasporascome into contactand are shapedby.
Withparticularizedmeaningsfor individualcontextsof Britain,the United States,
or the Caribbean,for example, the frameworksof postcolonialism,racial-ethnic
formation,and globalization nonetheless all, and often in dialogue, address the
transnationalnetworksin which South Asian migrantsare embedded.Again we
rehearsethe constitutivetensions of diaspora.
In its emphasis on the relationshipbetween India and the world, postcolonial
theory has established one importantaxis on which the development of South
Asian subjectivitiesturn (Loomba 1998, Gandhi 1998). The realities, memories,
andrebuttalsto Britishcolonialismhaveprofoundlyaffecteddiasporicpeoples and
theircultures.In idea anddeed, colonialism,then, has createda languagein which
to understandthe developmentof nationalisms,at home andabroad.And although
anthropologicalwork on South Asian migrantcultures has been more inclined
to utilize transnationalismor diaspora as explanatoryrubrics, I would suggest
here that postcolonialism can be of service, too. In the ways that postcolonial,
or colonial discourse, studies have emerged from more literaryspaces (Bahri &
Vasudeva1996), these fields also containquestionsrelatedto genre and textuality
more generally that illuminate the imaginariescentral to South Asian diasporic
culturalproductionand experience.
554 SHUKLA

Racialformationandethnicityfunctionanalagously,as broadsocial frameworks

in which South Asian diasporascome to life and are made visible (Fryer 1984,
Gillespie 1995, Khoshy 1998, Leonard 1992, Sivanandan1982, Kumar 2000,
Prashad2000, Shukla 1997, Fisher 1980, Desai 1963, Daniels 1989, Williams
1988, Vertovec1992). Historically,and more globally, South Asian diasporascan
be linkedto crucialshiftsin thedevelopmentof capitalismandexplanatorydiscour-
ses of difference;in both the political and militarydominationof the easternand
southernhemisphere,as well as in the insertionof theirpeoples into Europeanand
NorthAmericansystems of labor,can be found the origins of the racializationof
South Asian diasporas.And the specificities are intriguing.In many Caribbean
countries, such as Trinidadand Guyana, South Asians occupy particularethnic
positions within hybrid and vigorously multicultural societies (Khan 1994,
Munasinghe2001). SouthAsian communitiesin Fiji and SouthAfrica alternately
embraceandrejecttheirown racialexceptionalismwithinvery raciallyconflictive
national-socialarrangements(Lemon 1990, Thiara2001, Gillion 1962). And in
the United States and Britain,the sites of many insurgentmovementson behalf of
racial identities and the public productionof ethnicity as a mode of social strat-
ification, South Asians have played variouscentraland peripheralroles (Prashad
2000, Shukla 1997, Leonard 1992, Helweg & Helweg 1990, Ballard 1994). The
persistenceof various forms of homeland-derivedidentities, such as Indianness,
Hindutva, or Pan-Islamicism, within differently articulated social formations
abroadtestifies to the difficultyof decouplingthe nationalfrom the international,
or the local and the global, in diasporicforms.
Giventhe wide geographiccoordinatesof SouthAsian diasporas,recentefforts
to describe shifts in the world economy that have resultedin more financialand
political integrationas partof a process called globalizationare also particularly
relevant here (King 1991, Sassen 1998). Diasporas have become ideal sites to
explore the culturaleffects of globalization,and South Asian diasporascomprise,
in many ways, the paradigmaticcase. The juncture of two facts render South
Asian diasporasanalyticallyripe for globalizationtheorists:the emergentthird-
world technologically based economy of India and the often crucial role that
Indianmigrantfinanciersaroundthe worldplay in a rangeof transnationalcapital
formations(Lessinger 1992, Shukla 1999, Nayyar 1994, Khandelwal1995). The
primarydifficulty with seeing South Asian diasporasthrougha lens shaped by
theories of globalization is the contemporary,presentist nature of the analysis
when in fact the field of studymust entail a longerhistoricaltrajectorythatbegins
even before Britishcolonialism.
The shortcomingsattendingany singularperspectiveon these diasporasemerge
as muchfrom disciplinarylimits as they do fromconceptualproblems.In as much
as postcolonialismhas been thoughtto be the purviewof literature,identityforma-
tion the preoccupationof the field of racial and ethnic studies, and globalization
a problematicwithin sociology, we have lacked a sustaineddialogue among the
theories and concepts that have emerged from specific academic locations. One
premisingargumentof this review is that diasporicforms, particularlythose that
 SOUTHASIANDIASPORAS 555

have emergedfrom andthroughSouthAsian experiences,area stage for the bring-

ing together of varied models for thinkingthroughsubjectivity,and an occasion
to drawthose approachesout of theirconfinedspaces of literarycriticism,the so-
cial sciences, history,and ethnic studies. This kind of interdisciplinarityemerges
throughthe disconnectionsbetween place and identity,the negotiationsbetween
the local and the global, and the highlighting of the importanceof the imagi-
nary in any evocation of "experience"that are not only produced from within
SouthAsian diasporasbut arealso centralto how anthropologyis being reworked,
methodologically and theoretically (Gupta & Ferguson 1997, Ong 1999). The
differencescreated,inside a nation, transnation,and interation, by South Asian
diasporasgesture,then,towardthe old andnew differenceslying at the very doorof
anthropology.

THE WORKOF SOUTHASIANS

Perhapsone of the most acute dissonances within South Asian diasporasis the
social life of class. Indenturedsugarworkersfrom the Indiansubcontinentin the
early 1900s in Mauritius(Carter1996) would seem to have little, if anything,in
common with contemporarynonresidentIndiansin Hong Kong who are able to
drawon huge sourcesof capital.And my goal here is hardlyto make the case that
these experiences should or should not be seen as partof an enforced trajectory.
But those variancesthemselvespose importantissues for the contentof this topic.
Althoughpeoples fromthe Indiansubcontinentcould be foundin spacesaround
the ancient world, in Greece and Rome (Arora 1991, Begley & Daniel 1991),
and onward, this essay begins in a more modem period, with British colonial-
ism and, therefore,implicitly builds a trajectoryof experiences throughshifts in
world capitalism. Between 1830 and 1920, a large proportionof Indians living
abroadservedas indenturedlaborin Mauritius,Malaya,Burma,Ceylon, Reunion,
Jamaica,Trinidad,Martinique,BritishGuiana,Natal, and otherplaces (Anderson
2000, Breman & Daniel 1992, Carter 1995, Gillion 1962, Kale 1998, Kondapi
1951, Lal 1980, Laurence 1994, Northrup1995, Tinker 1993). From the outset,
indentured,and later,free wage, laborposed a problemto originarymeaningsfor
the term diasporaas a forced dispersion.But work itself, and especially the kinds
of workin which Indianswere engagedin the colonies, has always impliedvarying
levels of choice and compulsion;one could certainlysee these movementsout of
India as compelled by the disadvantagedeconomic circumstancesat home (and
the detrimentaleffects of British colonialism) and simultaneouslyseized on, as
opportunities,by those with a particularability to desire and execute departure.
The diversebackgroundsof workersand the multipleprocesses of proletarianiza-
tion in which they became imbricatedput a brakeon the inclinationto make some
generalconclusion aboutthe subjectificationof workersfrom the Indiansubcon-
tinent throughtime. Breman& Daniel (1992) make an analagousobservationin
theirimportantdiscussion of the fissuredcategoryof the "coolie."And thoughfor
556 SHUKLA

ourpurposesIndiansservedas importantsourcesfor plantationlabor,it needs also

to be mentionedthat peoples from all over Asia occupied similarcategories;the
resulting social and culturalcomplexity within sites of British imperialismdoes
not simply accrueto SouthAsian diasporasbutto a whole rangeof otherdisplaced
populationsas well.
SouthAsian workers,theirfamilies, andtheirdescendantswere madeto occupy
a complex intermediaryrole in the structuresof race relationsin these societies,
a role thathas had tremendouspolitical and social consequencesinto the present.
In South Africa, the half-life of Indianindenturedlaborhas taken shape through
the machinationsof apartheid,and it has made for complicated alliances and
conflicts throughtime with black Africansas well as white Afrikanersand British
(Bhana 1992, Thiara2001, Lemon 1990). And in Fiji, relationsbetween Indians
and native peoples continue to approachvariouscrisis points when political and
social controlareup for negotiation.The representationof Indianwomen,andtheir
sexuality,became a site of anxiety as the pros and cons of indenture,andthen free
movementof laborto colonial outposts,werethe subjectof intensecolonialdebates
(Kelly 1991).
In Trinidadand Guyana, where Indian populationshave reached equivalent
numbersto black African groups, an importantissue has been the persistenceof
South Asian (Indian or Hindu, mainly) religious, kinship, culinary,musical, or
other social traditionsin the face of tremendousdiversityand apparentmixtures
within a broaderrubricof what writer Wilson Harris(1999) has called "cross-
cultural,"as opposed to multicultural,societies. In some ways, this may be a
recasting of the familiar problematicof integrationinto host societies. But the
issue bears special significancein the debates on South Asian diasporasbecause
it calls into question the basis for the presumedconnections between peoples:
"culture,"origin, or somethingelse altogether?
In his 1961 study,Klass (1961) elaboratedthe culturalconnectionsthatIndians
maintainedwith "homelandtraditions."For Klass, this was testamentto a kind of
culturalsurvival,an issue of particularimportanceto anthropologicalworkof that
period. Yet such insights are not easily boundedby time; in fact, a more recent
studyby Myers(1998) of Hindumusic makes similarpoints abouthow devotional
songs in Trinidad,connectedto theircounterpartsin India,chartthe geographical
movementof peoples. More interestingthan the truthclaims of these studies are
the consequences of thinking about Indian cultures as unities in the face of an
arrayof spectacularlydiverse elements externalto them. It is precisely this type
of historical and social experience that has served as the evidence, in the past
and into the present,for stories of ethnicity,for anthropologicalconsiderationsof
difference,and for culturalpolitics in a range of contexts (Cohen 1978, Glazer&
Moynihan1963). But it mattersa greatdeal how the lens for looking at a cultureis
constructedtheoreticallyand what the directionis of the gaze. And in large part,
the languagesof culturalintegrityand continuityhave governedthatprocess.
But recent work in cultural studies (Hall 1996, Lowe 1996, Joseph 1999),
especially, has brought into being theoretical concepts like "hybridity,"which
 SOUTHASIANDIASPORAS 557

highlightthe culturalmixtures,ambivalencesof peoplehood,and constructedness

of race and ethnicity that are particularlycentral to South Asian diasporas all
over the world and that have a particularresonance in the diverse social spaces
of the Caribbean.In Trinidad,for example, SouthAsian culturesin diasporahave
undergonetransformationvis a vis African traditionsdating back to the slave
economy.Whethersome elementsof those culturesremainunchanged,in political
or social terms, is a question that recasts hybridityitself as, possibly, a cultural
mixture comprised of individual, and discrete, parts (Khan 1994, Munasinghe
2001). And here, again, we returnto ethnicity paradigms:the melting pot or the
salad bowl is one renderingof thatproblematic(Glazer& Moynihan1963).
Leonard(1992) has treatedthese issues in her study of PunjabiIndianworkers
who migratedto Californiaand the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900s. Like
their counterpartsin the sugar colonies, these Indianswere certainlymarkedby
an imbricationin agriculturallabor arrangements.But their position in develop-
ing racial landscapeswas special, taking shape as it did within, on the one hand,
Anglo-Mexican-EastAsian arrangementsin the U.S. west coast and, on the other,
black-whitenationaldiscoursesof citizenship.Datingbackto the early 1900s, and
in many ways lasting until the present, Indian migrants' racial otherness in the
United States was liminal and ambiguous.Inclusion in the category of "Asian"
was uncertainfor Indian workerswhose national and culturalhistories, as well
as smallernumbersand dispersedpopulations,createdotherlanguagesfor group
boundaryconstructionand social integration.Leonardfocuses on an interesting
case in which significantnumbersof Indianmen who stayed in the United States
marriedMexican women and createdbiculturalfamilies and somewhathybridso-
cial formations.Leonard'ssimultaneousemphasis on extraordinarymoments of
social mixtureand studiedpersistenceof "Punjabi"and "Mexican"culturaltradi-
tions in a NorthAmericanlandscaperepresentsthe intrinsictensions of diaspora.
And the desires of a second generationof Punjabi-MexicanAmericansto identify
as Indian, as related to their fathers' status as landowners,for the sake of class
privilege, underscoresthe continualcorrespondencesbetween class and ethnicity
createdby hierarchiesof nation-stateformation.
The processby which class has been indexedto diasporicethnicityhas acquired
complex formsin the case of SouthAsian migrantsworkingandliving in England.
Contradictionsbetweena homelandandsettlementorientationarecastinto specific
forms of relief in an epistemological context of making empire and postcolony.
Appearingfirstas "underclass"laborers,Indianswent to Englandas lascars,sailors
who had workedon British ships transportinggoods (Visram 1986), as ayahs, or
nannies,and as valets and householdservants;these peoples' movements,in fact,
took the routesof the Britishempire,in material,financial,as well as reproductive
terms. Those who stayed on in London aftertheir terms of utility had been com-
pletedbecamethe subjectof racializedsocial reformprojects,as missionarySalter
(1873) evidences. Veryearly in the trajectoryof SouthAsians in Britain,then, the
collusion of the apparatiof colonialism abroad,and the developingmachineryof
the state domestically,would define the subjectivityof the diasporicmigrant.
558 SHUKLA

The incorporationof these experiencesof labor,oppressiveand highly racial-

ized, within the cultural and intellectual productionsof South Asian diasporas
remainsan ambivalentproposition.In more contemporaryevocationsof diaspora,
in fact, the silences aroundan older set of referencepoints can be seen to reflect
class, caste, and regionalbiases; a certainfinanciallysuccessful, upper-casteand
India-centricimage of South Asians abroadcan only be destabilizedby a juxta-
position with stories and experiences that do not contain such privilege. And to
be sure, much scholarshipand culturalproductionhas made a great deal of the
disjuncturesin a historicaltrajectoryof migration.The specificityof this dilemma,
withinIndianor SouthAsian diasporiccommunities,may in a generalway simply
compel a returnto the basic problematicof ethnicity,of differenceand sameness,
and of the essentially tenuous, and at times heuristic,natureof what coheres the
subjectof study.

TRAVELAND AN EXHILIC IMAGINARY

One way of metaphoricallyrenderingthe movement that gives rise to diasporic

experienceis travel.Oftencounterposedto migrationas a theoreticaltool in under-
standingdiasporas,travelhas often been relegatedto the sphereof literarystudies,
just as migrationhas hoveredwithinthe collective concernsof the social sciences.
But I would suggest that an imaginaryis centralto the way diasporicexperience
is articulated,within and outside of actualcommunities,and furtherarguethatno
one languageof displacement,like that of settlement,should dominatean under-
standingof the field. Whereintravelimplies an impermanencyto the experience
of moving abroad,it does so not only in actualterms, relatingto the question of
whetheror not peoples are able and willing to returnto their homeland,but also
in psychic terms that seem to quite vividly depict those who live outside of what
mightbe perceivedof as "home."Clifford(1997) has productivelyjoined the terms
travel and diasporanot only to elucidate what happensimaginativelyand mate-
rially when ethnographicsubjectsmove or have moved, but also to illumine the
complexities for researcherand researchedalike, inherentin the anthropological
projectto understandthe worlds that have come about throughsuch tremendous
social shifts.
Fischer (1986) has compellingly arguedfor criticallyreadingautobiographical
and other ethnic texts as part of new ethnographicprojects.And Seyhan writes,
in a way thatseems particularlycompellingfor our topic, that"possibilityof self-
representationis intricatelylinkedto a collective memoryandrepresentsexplicitly
or implicitlyconflictswith past andpresentcontexts"(1996, pp. 187-88). Intrinsic
tensions of the diasporic experience are represented,if not assuaged, as South
Asian subjectsengage in processes of translationwith a varietyof literary-cultural
consequences.
Travelis the unifying theme of two importantworks by writer-anthropologist
Amitav Ghosh. In the quasi-historicalnovel ShadowLines (Ghosh 1995), Ghosh
explores the postwar period more generally, beginning with a preindependence
 SOUTHASIANDIASPORAS 559

migration,detailing life in India and Britain throughthe 1950s and 1960s, and
endingwithEnglandin the 1970s. Dividedintotwo sectionsentitled"GoingAway"
and "ComingHome," the novel is peopled by characterswho travelbetween the
worlds of England and India, actually and symbolically. The notions of "going
away"and "cominghome"functionironicallyin this text, as provisionalpoints in
a more circularmovementbetweenplaces of the mind and spirit,much as they do
for SouthAsian migrantswhose "home"is a matterof some debateandwho create
all sorts of connections with a real and imagined world outside of the ones they
live in. In this sense, too, "Indianness"or "SouthAsianness"is detachedfrom its
presumedplace in the subcontinent.An ultimatelyfutile searchfor origins is the
conceit of In an AntiqueLand (Ghosh 1992)-a text that chartsGhosh's desire,
in the midst of ethnographicfieldworkin Egypt, to learn more about an Indian
slave writtenabout in the middle 1100s by Jewish and Egyptianmerchants.The
presenceof an Indian,boththe slave andGhoshhimself,in the stateof travelaffords
a rethinkingof Indiandiasporas;here thereis no possibility of the relinquishment
of a national-culturalidentity,simply a rearrangingof the coordinatesin which it
is articulated.Narrativeresolutionin both texts lies in hybridity,the sense thatall
culturesare in some kind of contact,althoughhere, as in the cases of SouthAsian
diasporasin the Caribbeanandin the 1900s in NorthAmerica,thathybridityleaves
some characterof the elements intact.GhoshremainsIndian,just as the slave did,
but within a wider imaginativecircuitry.These are the "routes"that Cliffordhas
writtenabout so compellingly.
Nation is multiply transgressedand reinscribedin an explicitly autobiograph-
ical text, My Own Country:A Doctor's Story (Verghese 1994), about a Christian
Keralitedoctor from Ethiopiawho attendsmedical school in India and moves to
the United Statesto work with AIDS patientsin Tennessee.Verghese'sstory con-
tains travelsthat challenge simple homeland-landof settlementdichotomies;the
autobiographicalsubjectis not simply from India,but instead,commutesbetween
variouspointsin the broadercircuitryof diasporathat,importantly,arenot those of
the more familiarmetropolesof Bombay,New York,andLondon.His subsequent
and intense intimacies with other men, particularlythose suffering from AIDS,
create an alternativesetting for affiliation and attachmentoutside of the ethnic
community.Verghesemultiply rendershis "country"as America, as small-town
Tennessee, and as a more transnationalworld. Such multiplicity might be seen
as essential to the creationof a range of South Asian diasporicartifactsthat have
sought to come to terms with the contradictionsof exile (Dangor 1997, Nelson
1992).

OLD AND NEW NATIONS OF DIASPORA

Despite the internationalreach of South Asian diasporas,a basic building block

remainsthe nation, in some form or another.In fact, nation is the scriptnot only
of the cultures created, but also of the presence of South Asians in non-South
Asian countries. In a postwar world, where diverse "multicultural"societies are
560 SHUKLA

understoodto be the integratedideal of western countries, being from another

nation confers a sense of identity and creates the means for membershipinto
a broaderset of social arrangements.This interpretationcasts into question the
validity,even in the past, of assimilativeprocesses thatwere thoughtto undergird
nationalformations,particularlyof the United States.
For Indiansin theirrespectivediasporas,the languageof nationalityhas been
ultimatelytied to and createdwithin the ideologies, as well as actualpower struc-
tures,of colonialism.This was as trueafter 1947 as it was before, andit is possible
to arguefor realcontinuitiesin nationalfeeling throughvarioussocial andpolitical
shifts. Yetof coursethe content,as well as the power,of the nationalforce changes,
in ways that reveal the essential tenuousnessof the unities. As colonial subjects
were assigned to the British administrativecategory of India, their subjectivity
as Indian was manifested in an anticolonialnationalism,a productionin which
even the diversity acknowledgedand managedby the colonial project could be
strategicallysuppressed.And the power of this nationalismwas also in its ability
to move transnationallythroughIndianmigrantcommunities.The GhadarParty,
a revolutionaryanticolonialgrouporiginallyformedin the United States,but with
influence and alliances throughoutmyriadsites of Indianmigrantconcentration,
was in many respects an exemplary diasporic formation (Bose 1965, Ganguly
1980, Mathur1970, Puri 1983, Raucher1974). And Indianindependence,in fact,
became a conceptualsite to considerbroaderquestionsof the power relationsbe-
tween nations and among social groups formed throughinequities and western
domination,the latterof which eventuallyled to the creationof third-worldistsen-
sibilities, andto the allianceof postwarnationalisms,in the nonalignedmovement.
An accountby Puri (1983) of the GhadarParty,in fact, makes a greatdeal of the
broad connections made with others aroundthe world, noting in particularthe
membersof revolutionarypolitical groupsin Russia, China,Mexico, Ireland,and
Egypt called "fellow Ghadarites."
It is interestingthat much of the existing scholarshipon the GhadarPartyhas
been publishedin India, ratherthan in the United States or England.Partly,this
fact resonates with the earlier discussion about more working-classexperiences
fading from the view of postwar narrativizationof ethnic insurgency.But we
might also consider the ways in which such a historiographicalsilence reflects
alternativeand,to some extent,competingideas aboutIndiannationalismthathave
come to be spatially and temporallybounded.The internationalistreach and the
necessaryalliancesof the political (and social) formationof the GhadarPartymay
be particularlygermaneto the desire among scholarslocated in the subcontinent
to recover a progressiveform of Indian nationalism,one that critiques western
imperialism.But in diasporic articulationsfrom largely first-worldnations that
have, in the postindependenceperiod, become associated with the homeland of
India, and thathave directedthemselves largely to "Indianness,"as opposed to a
more subcontinentalSouth Asianness, that moment when nationalitywas being
assertedfrom abroadas indexedto political developmentsof a more global nature
may not be partof a functionalhistoricalmemory.This is to say thatjust as there
 SOUTHASIANDIASPORAS 561

are manyforms of Indiannationalistmemoryat home (Chatterjee1993), thereare

variedrenderingsabroadfor purposesthat have to do with how "ethnic"groups
become constitutedin countriesof settlement.
As a basic organizinglogic for diasporiccommunities, nation has expansive
and, often, apparentlycontradictorymeanings. And after independencein 1947,
nationand statewere indissolublylinked,even as each of those categoriesbecame
variouslyoccupiedby the projectof a new India,a new Pakistanand independent
Sri Lankaand Bangladesh.Especially in the case of India,an intense anticolonial
nationalistsentimentundergirdedthe formationof the institutionalapparatusof the
stateandthe forms of consentproducedamonglargelyHindubutalso Muslimand
Christianpopulations;in this respect,it is useful to resist conceiving of a familiar
divide between the nationas imaginedand the state as materiallyconstructed,for
a more abstractrenderingof both entities took shape at home and abroad.In fact,
the fluidity between the concept of the nation and the possibilities for the Indian
state is a fundamentaland distinctive characteristicof the "Indianness"created
in diaspora.Throughthe close connectionbetween nation and state, we can also
see new (and old) translationsof difference from "home" into social differen-
tiation abroad.Region, language, caste, and religion all become fertile sites for
subjectificationafter1947, in ways both anchoredto andautonomousfromnation-
state projectsand are arguablyless resuppressedin the postindependenceperiod
(Daniel 1984).
Yet the constructedmemory of the traumaof colonialism has been a central
partof nationalistcommunities,as well as of their articulationto otherpossibili-
ties of self and group, such as integrationin places outside of India. India's (and
Pakistan's)place in a worldof nationsin the past,present,andfuturehas conferred
special identitiesof opposition,manifestedin the geopoliticalprojectsof anticolo-
nialism, nonalignment,and, eventually,neoliberalism.At times, being an Indian,
Pakistani,or Bangladeshisubjectbecame tied to variouspolitical movementsthat
posed critiques of western dominationin a world system. Cheddi Jagan, prime
minister of Guyana, whose Indiannesssignified simultaneouslyethnic minority
status within the countryand a connectionto a progressivethirdworldismbased
in histories of economic and social development that made his ancestors coo-
lie laborers, is an interesting diasporic subject in this regard (Williams 1991,
Singham & Hune 1986). Subsequentstrugglesover the role of Indiancitizens in
emergentnationalistarrangements,not only in Guyanabutalso, most spectacularly,
in Trinidadand Fiji duringthe 1960s and into the present, telescoped historical
experiencesof colonialism and nationalismin Indiainto othertime periods.
An identity based in oppositionrelates not only to colonialism, but also to its
aftermath.Althoughthe complex of "India"could conjureforthprogressivecriti-
ques of domination,it could also alludeto political and social oppression,particu-
larly concerning those "minority"positionalities. Perhapsthe most profoundof
these is Islam. The dominanceof Hindus within particularvisions of Indianna-
tionalism,the contestednatureof the partitionof the Indiansubcontinentin 1947,
andthe ensuinghostilitiesbetweenpostindependenceIndiaandPakistanproduced
562 SHUKLA

deep divisions that became organizedunderthe sign of religion. Largelythe de-

velopment of Pakistaninationalism,too, has operatedas religious opposition, to
India as well as to a developingglobal order,much as have nationalismsof other
Muslim-majoritycountries.In this sense, Pakistanimigrantcommunitiesare ar-
ticulatedas muchto the broaderdiasporicproductionof Islam,andto an imagined
religious homelandof Mecca, as they are to any nation-state.Here the difference
that emerges from some kind of absence (of state power, of control of national
boundaries)is transformedinto a difference of religious communityacross state
boundaries.In some sense, then,in these non-Indian,post-1947 diasporas,a broad
nationalheterogeneityis accountedfor and negotiated.
The desire for a Punjabi-Sikhhomeland,a Khalistan,creates anotheraccount
of nationality,diaspora,and identity (Axel 2001, Mahmood 1996, Tatla 1999).
Positioned against the Indian nation-state,Sikhs fighting for independencemay
see themselvesas in a stateof exile both at home andabroad.Political (andforced)
exile testifies to a ratherdifferentform of diasporicexperience;in as much as the
Khalistanmovementis transnationalin its very nature,it cannotbe easily captured
by any category of migrationthat maintainsa division between homeland and
land of settlement.For her book on Sikh militants,in fact, Mahmood(1996) con-
ductedher fieldworkentirelyamong subjectsliving in NorthAmerica,noting that
geographyand cultureare effectively decoupledthroughthe extraordinarytrans-
plantationof Sikh households and communitiesin the United States and Canada
that seems to reproducewhat is from home. Yet the fascinatingclaiming of west
coast gurudwarasfromthe Ghadarmovementoriginallydirectedat Indiannational
independenceby activistsfor Sikh independencemay againraise questionsrelated
to Jones's (1968) idea of the "changingsame,"namely is this or is this not a dif-
ferentinstantiationof cultureand politics? Perhapsthis is best respondedto from
within the realm of representation,as Axel's work (2001) has done.
Nonetheless, the problematicof claimed territorywithin existing states that
the Sikh case develops (Tatla 1999) is one that has general importancefor the
analysisof diasporas.Based on an intensivestudyof the Tamildiaspora,Fuglerud
(1999) concludes thatthere is a highly internalizedlogic to the social experience
of refugees in a variety of places, such that the formations seem to be almost
untouchedby their appearancein specific locales, such as Norway or Canada,or
for thatmatter,Sri Lanka.Regardlessof whetheror not comparativeethnographic
work in all the many sites of a Tamil diasporawould bear out this conclusion,
the similaritybetween Fuglerud'sand Mahmood'spoints here is intriguingand
might be best interpretedthroughthe overlappingfiguresof the political exile and
refugee, especially as they are positionedagainstthat of the migrant.
Differenceas simultaneouslywilled oppositionalityandexternalminoritization
is anotherway to think about the tensions that subcontinentalculturalidentities
have produced in new lands of settlement.And in fact, as noted by Ahmed &
Donnan (1994a), globalization has especially accelerated desires for Islam.
Perhapsthe most dramaticof illustrativeevents is the diasporic effects of the
controversyover the publicationof The Satanic Verses(Rushdie 1988). What is
 SOUTHASIANDIASPORAS 563

importantfor our purposeshere is the tremendousresponse elicited from British

Muslims,largelymigrantsfromPakistanandBangladesh.In spectacularizedevents
to supportthe IranianAyatollah'sdeath warrant,Muslims in London and other
Britishcities burnedbooks as well as effigies of Rushdieand expresseda sense of
profoundvictimizationby the text itself (Samad 1992). These moments became,
in the westernmedia, symbolic of religiousintoleranceandfundamentalism;in the
classic overwritingof Islam, the Ayatollahbecame conflatedwith Muslim immi-
grants from the Indian subcontinent.In their analyses of the controversy,both
Asad (1990) and Werbner(1996), though in differentways, refocus attentionon
Muslimmigrantsubjectsthroughtheconstructionof thosecommunitiesthatsought
to expressdisagreementswith Rushdiethroughmultiplereadingsof the text andof
theirselves. WhatWerbnerhas notedfor anothersimilarlyrepresentativemoment,
the Gulf crisis, is also relevantfor the Rushdie affair,that this kind of moment is
a window on the confluences of "enclaved"communityformationand more di-
asporic forms of citizenship, a renderingof a local-global problematic(Werbner
1994).
The Rushdie affair, and its effects on diasporic cultures, illustrateshow the
process by which ethnic communitiesclaim a text has to do not only with whether
it is actually read by community members but also with what it and its author
represent.This is to say thatcertaindiasporic-ethnic"readingpractices"may bring
togethertext and context in new ways, precisely because they commandpsychic
and even bodily identification.
That constitutivelocal-global tension of diasporicformationsfinds expression
in the social architectureof specificmigrantcommunities.One highly studiedcom-
munityspace is Southall,London.A well-traveledsymbol of "Indiancommunity"
or "Punjabicommunity,"Southallhas achievedlegendaryimportancethroughout
the diasporafor its ability to crystallize the conflicts between migrantand host
societies. Just as importantly,migrantgroups have engaged in political struggles
over how to define their own space, as well as how to respond to racism. And
most of the recent anthropologicalwork significantlydepartsfrom older models
of ethnic studies in which the coming to consciousness of a certainkind of ethnic
identity is made to overlap with the trajectoryof developmentof a geographi-
cally boundedcommunity.Instead,migrant-racialcommunitiesare deconstructed
from the very outset, leading to a complex notion of the lived experience of not
one but many diasporas.Baumann(1996), in fact, actively works against"reified
culture"by identifying within the boundariesof Southall five "ethnic"commu-
nities: Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Afro-Caribbean,and White. In so doing, he also
challenges the content of popularimages circulatedthroughSouth Asian diaspo-
ras of Southallas a Punjabiand, by extension, Indianplace. Despite the emphasis
on conceiving of ethnic minority boundariesas being broken down by move-
ments to and from homeland,thereis surprisinglylittle work done on how ethnic
groups themselves are porous to one another.This researchgap appearsnot only
in work on South Asian and otherethnic minoritygroups in England,it also ap-
pearsin the United States, which has a long traditionof detailed studies of ethnic
564 SHUKLA

minorities in polyglot sites. This is why the emphasis on differentiationwithin

recentwork on Southallis important.In her explorationof the experienceof tele-
vision and video among young South Asian people in Southall,Gillespie (1995)
identifies anotherculturalsite that has profoundfissuringpossibilities: technol-
ogy. Both the open-endednarrativesembodiedin television and the transnational
(andtranscommunity)transmissionpossibilitiesof communalwatchinganticipate
a trulytransformeddiasporicsubjectivity,althoughGillespie's specific concernis
the contestationsof generationalshifts in British Asian ethnic communitiesand
theirrepresentation.
Simultaneouslya "LittleIndia"and a British "ethniccommunity,"Southallis
able to wonderfullycapturethe contradictionsof nation in a globalized world,
contradictionsSouth Asian diasporasmore generally bring into sharperfocus.
Boundariesof time and space are continuallytransgressedby social formations
that come into being throughimaginativeand political renderingsof themselves
elsewhere.For the Sikh communityin Southall,the fantasyof a Khalistanihome-
land createsa languagefor comprehendingnot only issues of subjectivitybut also
forms of political violence and surveillanceperpetratedby the Indianstate (Axel
2001). And in my own work (Shukla 1999) on Southall and Jackson Heights,
Queens,another"LittleIndia"in the United States,I have engagedin a considera-
tion of how the consumptionof "Indianness"createsforms of culturalcitizenship
that resonatewith, on the one hand, profounddesire for India and, on the other,
practicalmembershipin the BritishandU.S. nations.The apparentparadoxcreated
from such moves is assuaged by discourses of multiculturalismand the national
script basic to its execution. Here we again returnto the point that South Asian
diasporashave served as ideal vehicles (a) for interveningin anthropologicalde-
bates aboutethnography,(b) of takingseriouslythe breakdownof geographyas a
centrallydefining force in people's lives, and (c) for giving descriptivepower to
narrativesof rupturein social life that work on globalizationhas assertedto be a
culturaldominantof our times.
Globalizationhas in no way diminishedthe intensity of nationalism;in fact,
thereis a powerfulargumentto be made aboutthe increasein nationalismthrough
very contemporarynegotiationsof global and local spheres of culture, politics,
and economy. For the case of South Asian diasporas,it is impossible to overstate
the importanceof the rise of the Indiannation-statein a postwarandpostindepen-
dence period. In fact, it is throughdiasporathat one could tracknationalism,and
this, certainly,is tied to changes in technology, communication,and community
associated with globalization. This has certainly taken shape in the conceptual
correspondencesmade between religion and nation. Bhatt (2000) has powerfully
argued that Hindutvamovements have been able to negotiate the relationship
of diasporic subjects to their homeland through nationalist-religiousstories of
prevalenceand preservationtaking shape in worldwide organizationsof Vishwa
HinduParishadand RashtriyaSwayamsevakSangh. Yet these broadergroupings
have differentialeffects, and the ability of diasporic fables to encompass ques-
tions of minoritizationin England and the United States is testament to their
 SOUTHASIANDIASPORAS 565

suppleawarenessof local-globaldynamicsand an acceptanceof the contradictory

nationalismsthat migrantcommunitieslive within. In more general terms, given
these complexities in acknowledgedparadoxicalmoments, it seems importantto
read the rise of traditionalism,in religion and culture, within open narrativesof
globalization(Rajagopal2001). Even the nonresidentIndianwho has emergedout
of the programsof the Indiannation-stateto encourageinvestment,and who is a
prototypefor transnationalcapitalistclasses (Lessinger 1992), freely operatesin
a space createdby the culturalpast and extrememodernity,a kind of practicethat
Ong (1999) has termedflexible citizenship.

DIASPORASAS NONNATIONAL?

Nationalityacquiresdifferentmeanings and effects when our gaze is directedto

nations other than India,just as diasporatakes differentshapes throughnon-first
world spaces. South Asians from countriesof the Caribbeanand in eastern and
southernAfricapresentspecial challengesto lineartrajectoriesof immigrationand
even to homeland-centerednarrativesof diaspora,particularlywhen these peoples
become furtherdislocated. The 1972 expulsion of South Asians from Uganda
precipitated,on the one hand, a nationalpolitical crisis within Britainabouthow
and where to resettle formercolonial subjectsand, on the other,a profoundanxi-
ety within South Asian communitiesaboutmigration,belonging, and citizenship
(Layton-Henry1992, Bhachu 1985, Mamdani1973, Marett1989). In some cases,
a connectionwith a distantIndianhomelandwas deliberatelyreconstructed,while
in others, formationsarticulatedto other national-racialspaces emerged (Joseph
1999).
The increasedflow of people of SouthAsian originfromthe Caribbeaninto first-
worldcountries,moreevidenceof whathas been called "twice-migration"(Bhachu
1985), rearrangesthe coordinatesof class and ethnic formationin diaspora.If the
scholarshipon indenturedandfree migrationhas become somewhatdichotomized
as attendingto "third-world"and "first-world"perspectives,the globalizationthat
producesall sorts of new migrationsintervenesand challenges us to consider,for
example, the impact of working-classGuyanese Asian immigrantsin Queens on
the cosmopolitanIndiandiaspora.Joseph(1999) has productivelyturnedto issues
of performancein order to elucidate the multiplicity,and even agency, basic to
some lesser-knowndislocationsthat are a partof South Asian diasporas.
The contemporarypolitical dominanceof the nation-stateof India within the
subcontinentalregion finds a kind of double standardin the significantmajorityof
works on Indianformationswithin the literatureon South Asian diasporas.And
thatfact ultimatelygeneratesthe questionof the extent to which assumptionsand
experiencesspecificto Indiaundulyinfluencetheproposedcontentandmeaningof
more diverseformations.Particularlywith regardto categoriesof subjectivity,na-
tionalshiftsof emphasiscan makea greatdeal of difference.Whetherthepresumed
South Asian subjectis a "worker,"a "migrant,"a "refugee,"or an "exile,"as the
566 SHUKLA

cases of Sikhs and Tamilshave suggested,dependson the routes and temporality

of diasporicmovementand determinesthe productionof class, racial, and ethnic
positionality(Daniel 1996). Leaving the broaderrubricof South Asian diasporas
as open as possible, and as dynamically constructedby tensions of the general
and the particular,is but a temporarysolution to some of these basic dilem-
mas. Importantconflicts between traditionalnotions of cultureand increasingly
nontraditionalforms of identity have taken place within diasporicformationsof
gender,sexuality,andyouth.Feministorganizations,particularlyin NorthAmerica
and Britain,have been disposed to conceive of themselves as "SouthAsian" or
"black"(Bhattacharjee1992) and,in so doing, level critiquessimultaneouslyat the
particularisticand nationalisticconceptions of cultureeffected by what Kasinitz
(1992) has termedthe ethnicityentrepreneursandthe hierarchicalrelationshipsof
genderand class within migrantcommunities.In this production,the categoryof
genderenables a fracturingof nation,such thatthe diasporacan be experiencedin
moreliberatoryways, as an openingfor transformedsubjectivitythatis not merely
tied to its links to a past history.
Sexuality,too, as a theoreticalfield, has providedan importantspace for cri-
tique of boundaries-of community,nation,and even transnation-as the fluidity
of identity and the accompanyingreconstructionof notions of self and groupbe-
come the means to create new unities that significantlydepartfrom older forms
(Gopinath 1992). Here we might think of how it is not only diasporaitself that
worksagainstnation,butratherthe identitiesthatemergefromthe dispersions,dis-
continuities,and ambiguitiesof diasporiccitizenshipthat can destabilize already
formed unities like those of the state. In fact, queer diasporascall into question
the heteronormativityessential to all nation-buildingprojectsand also that same
nationalismthatmight createcertainforms of diasporicattachment.
Many have arguedfor the importanceof musical culturesas a fertile arenafor
subjectivity.But unlike Myers (1998), whose materialon Hindu religious songs
in Trinidadseems to demonstrateculturalcontinuityof form and content, much
recent work has focused on hybridSouth Asian musical practices and their cul-
tures,such as bhangrain BritainandNorthAmericaespecially (Maira1999, Back
1995/1996) and chutney music in Trinidadand other parts of the Caribbean.As
Gilroy (1993) has arguedfor the black diaspora,so too do Sharmaet al. (1996)
suggest for South Asian diasporas,that music can be a centrallyimportantcul-
tural site for reconceiving of identity, culture, and solidaritybecause of its abi-
lity to transformitself, as well as be transmitted,across nationalboundaries.In
Trinidad,when Indian women perform local musics, as Niranjanahas shown,
they create spaces for new dialogues on the nature of gender, sexuality, and
nation.
The broaderdilemma of how to express a community'shope and desires and
packageit for the outsideworld,orhow to move fromexplorationsof the self to the
group,centerson the issue of representation,an issue thatpreoccupiesall groups
constructedthroughdifference,both inside and outside a nation (Radhakrishnan
1996). And in turn,"ethnicliterature,"or "diasporicliterature,"comes to termsnot
 SOUTHASIANDIASPORAS 567

only with the differenceof a groupbut also with what social effects thatdifference
has in a rangeof social arrangements(Womenof South Asian Descent Collective
1993, Bahri & Vasudeva 1996). In this respect, the Rushdie affair broughtthe
fundamentalquestion of representationto the fore, broughtit, in fact, to a crisis
point. But this issue cannot be wholly relegated to the field of literarystudies.
As Werber(1996) has suggested, it addressescentralconcerns of anthropology,
having to do with textualityand culturaltranslation,perhapsthe very mainstay
of ethnographicanalysis. As South Asian diasporas are made vivid through a
broad arrayof culturalforms, some familiar, such as music and literature,and
othersnewer,such as television and the internet,they bringto the field interesting
methodologicalquestionsabouthow to proceedwith culturalanalysisfor a rapidly
changing,geographicallydispersed,and multimediaset of communities.Various
culturalproducershave increasinglyturnedto film to representchanging South
Asian culturesin diaspora.Chadha'sBritishfilm, Bhaji on the Beach (1994), was
explicit in its portrayalof multiple generationsof BritishPunjabiwomen who in
varied ways contest gender and culturalexpectationsand also travelto a liminal
site, Blackpool, England,for a climactic workingout of social tensions. Prasad's
recentfilm, My Son the Fanatic (1998), reversedthe familiargenerationalconflict
by portrayinga Pakistaniimmigranttaxi driverin love with a white prostitute
whose BritishPakistanison becomes a Muslim fundamentalist.The popularityof
diasporic film and other expressive forms, such as art (Queens Museum of Art
1997) and dance, reflect a new concern with the visual, as well as, perhaps, a
resistance to narrativeclosure. I would also suggest that this set of productions
exhibitsinterestsin representingdiasporicculturefor widerpublics, andrelatedly,
expresses a desire to contemplateforms of belonging, in old (homeland)and new
(settlement)nations. The recent proliferationof work on South Asian diasporas
withinanthropologyas well as literaryandculturalstudiesmayhavetheunintended
effect of leading us to think of the theoreticalvocabularyfor such formationsas
new. But although it is importantto regardthe tremendoustransformationsin
migrantcultures,we might also take the subject of South Asian diasporasas an
occasion to inspire a revisiting of some older anthropologicaldebates about the
national boundedness of culture. It is interesting,for example, that the classic
study of East Indians in Trinidadby Klass (1961) was prefaced by comments
by ConradArensbergthat drew out Indian subjects' cultural connections with
India and the challenges that such "transnationalism" (though the word was not
then used) posed to multiethnic and multiracialsocieties of the Caribbean.In
fact, Klass (1961) and Herskovits& Herskovits(1947) before him were deeply
conscious of diasporasthat challenged simple models of integrationin Trinidad.
What, then, does it mean in general terms for such multiplicityto be understood
in more historicalterms and as a model for subsequentdevelopmentsof migrant
culture?
In exploringsuch questions,SouthAsian diasporasmay producea conversation
between older and newer anthropologicalwork on the subjectof group diversity.
Exploringwhat it means to be Asian, Asian American,Muslim, Tamil,or Indian
568 SHUKLA

American cannot be separated from an acknowledgment of the persistence of

Indianness around the world or the production of subcontinental antagonisms in
diasporic sites. In this sense, too, South Asian diasporas are a stage for South Asian
studies to come into dialogue with ethnic studies and for national productions of
knowledge to be thrown into question.
If the category of "South Asian" makes the most sense in constructed political
alliances in the subcontinent or in the solidarities of new identities in diasporas,
it also comes into direct conflict with the hyperproduction of more nationalist
groupings that evacuate the term of its meaning for a range of communities. New
forms of technology have not established a position in this debate, they have aided
and abetted both kinds of subjectivity. A broader analytical question that emerges
from this social impasse is whether the ethnographic field is able to accommodate
subject matter (as well as communities) that only provisionally hold together.
When "South Asian" defines a field of inquiry, does it create a new knowledge, or
does it simply do the work of description? These are questions implicit in a variety
of historical renderings of, not least of all, material in the present.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank E. Valentine Daniel and Thomas Klubock for their encour-
agement and counsel.

Visit the Annual Reviews home page at www.AnnualReviews.org

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