UCSB Anthropology Brown Bag Lecture Series Presents:

Indians Imagine the Indian Diaspora: The Dialectic between the National and Transnational

By Heather Horst

Migration has often been examined from the perspective of dispersed diasporic communities struggling to adjust and assimilate within their new country while continuing to identify with and imagine "home." However, little attention has been paid to the imaginations attitudes about the diaspora from those at "home." This paper seeks to alter this approach by examining the Indian perspective of the legal, economic and religious role of the Indian diaspora in India, with particular attention to how the Indian government and religious institutions in India ahve accommodated and altered the concerns of the Indian diaspora. Looking at the changes in the legal defintions of Indians in the diaspora as well as the encouragement of economic contributions by the Hindu nationalist movement, my discussion illustrates that despite the recent tensions between the secular state and religious politics, Hindu nationalists and the state are both capitalizing on a diasporic nostalgia for home while still strengthening the bond of India as a nation-state.



Wednesday October 15, 1997
HSSB 2001A, The Anthropology Conference Room

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