Towards a multicultural democracy: some thoughts on the recent Indian elections

Abstract The surprising defeat of the BJP in May's elections is evidence of longterm trends in India's politics. Welcomed by the diaspora with mixed feelings, the results inspire confidence in India's progress towards a mature multicultural democracy. The elections demonstrate that India is a far more diverse and pluralistic country than previous elections might have suggested and that Indian democracy successfully mirrors the country's ideological spectrum. In place of Hindu nationalism and the religious card, one finds a unique political leadership drawn from the country's minorities and shaped by India's synthetic culture.     

Religious and Secular Voluntary Participation by Immigrants in Canada: How Trust and Social Networks Affect Decision to Participate

Participation in voluntary associations is an important part of an immigrant’s integration into a host country. This study examines factors that predispose an immigrant’s voluntary involvement in religious and secular organizations compared to non-immigrants (“natives”) in Canada, and how immigrants differ from natives in their voluntary participation. The study results indicate that informal social networks, religious attendance, and level of education positively correlate with the propensity of both immigrants and natives to participate and volunteer in religious and secular organizations. Immigrants who have diverse bridging social networks, speak French and/or English at home, and either attend school or are retired are more likely to participate and volunteer for secular organizations. Further, social trust matters to native Canadians in their decision to engage in religious and secular organizations but not to immigrants. Pride and a sense of belonging, marital status, and the number of children increase the likelihood of secular voluntary participation of natives but not of immigrants. These findings extend the current understanding of immigrant integration and have important implications for volunteer recruitment.     

Armed masculinity,Hindu nationalism and female political participation in India

Male and female bodies as well as societal ideas defining cultural interpretations of masculinities and femininities are potent metaphors for expressing nation. This article examines two cultural expressions of nation and manliness – the Hindu soldier and warrior monk – disseminated by Hindu nationalist organizations in India. These images, among others, emerged from India's experience of British imperialism and are defined by values of martial prowess, muscular strength, a readiness to go to battle and moral fortitude. Men and women both respond to the call of a nationalism glorifying muscular warriors radiating an uncompromising moral resolve to defend their nation (us) against an easily recognizable enemy (them).

This article argues that this masculinized vision of nation carries important implications for women. Women enter this masculine environment through roles such as heroic mother, chaste wife and celibate warrior. Although divergent in their articulation at the grassroots, all three models of female behavior articulate two social themes. One, women's bodies represent national honor and two, this embodiment only works if women are chaste and virtuous. Indian feminists view such feminine activism with suspicion because the considerable empowerment women may derive from Hindu nationalist politics ultimately does not challenge the gendered power imbalances within the patriarchal Hindu family.     

The Impact of Intersecting Dimensions of Inequality and Identity on the Racial Status of Eastern African Immigrants1

In this article, we examine how immigrants from eastern Africa to the Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan area understand and navigate the U.S. color line and its implications for nonwhites. Although these immigrants are subject to constraints based on their racial status as black, they mobilize other intersecting aspects of their identities to manipulate racial classifications in the hopes of attaining upward mobility in the United States, even when doing so creates other social costs for them. Eastern African immigrants draw on their ethnicity and, among Muslim immigrants, their religion to differentiate themselves from African Americans, who occupy the lowest position in the U.S. racial hierarchy. In challenging their categorization as racially black and seeking to move up the racial hierarchy, Eastern African immigrants refine the color line to distinguish between African‐American blacks and non‐African‐American blacks.     

Remittances and the Maintenance of Dual Social Worlds: The Transnational Working Lives of Migrants in Greater London

Most research on remittances focuses on economic motivations, with little emphasis on the social contexts in which the remittance economy operates. Through an analysis of in‐depth interviews with migrant workers in a London hotel and hospital, we examine how migrants’ familial and social relationships in both sending and receiving countries inform the decision to send remittances. We suggest that remittances are a mechanism through which migrants are able to fulfil multiple obligations to families and places of origin, while also enhancing their own economic status and future. First, satisfying the cultural expectation of sending remittances helps migrants maintain their social worlds at “home”. Second, we observed that both positive and negative changes in power and resources influence the decision to send remittances by motivating migrants to invest in their social position in either their home or receiving country. In sum, we argue that the migrants’ social experience in the United Kingdom might be just as predictive of remittance behaviour as their economic and social status in the country of origin. We, therefore, call for a need to move beyond the often one‐sided concern with development by concentrating on the overlapping social worlds of migrants.     

Transnational ties and ethnic identities in the parental homeland: second-generation Indian Americans in India

ABSTRACT

This article explores the ‘return’ migration of high-skilled, second-generation Indian-Americans from the United States to India. Based on interviews with fifty-six respondents, it asks: What transnational ties do second-generation Indian Americans maintain with India prior to return? Upon return, what are their ‘reverse’ transnational linkages to the United States? How do these linkages shape their ethnic identities, if at all? Findings suggest that respondents’ transnational ties to India prior to return reinforce their identities as Indian Americans. Once in India, they maintain affective and civic ties to the United States, the country where they were born or raised. Further, American-inflected social ideas and norms shape returnees’ interactions with domestic workers in India. As they grapple with the disparities between Western and Indian norms on the treatment of domestic help, respondents privilege ‘American’ identities. These findings highlight the transnational ties and identity construction and negotiation of second-generation returnees.     

Encountering Hindutva,interrogating religious nationalism and (En)gendering a Hindu patriarchy in India's nuclear policies

This article explores the consequences of a gendered nationalism under India's recent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government that has relied on the discourses of Hindu women's violence and protection as elements of its discursive arsenal to pursue nuclearization as an aggressive policy of the Indian state. To this extent, the article interrogates a discursive relationship between a cultural patriarchy, its quest for Hindu nationalism and gender and the ways in which this patriarchy has both used and (ab)used the images of Hindu women to establish Islam/Pakistan as a threat to the supposedly Hindu India, and justify a nuclear policy for India. The article's contribution to international feminist politics lies in its attempts to stitch the localized politics of Hindu nationalism with its broader geo-political aspirations and implications, namely the role of the Indian state, under the BJP, in maintaining a communalized, militarized and a Hindu patriarchal violence at three inter-connected levels – between gender, communities and nations.     

Decoupling Religion and Ethnicity: Second-Generation Indian American Christians

Classic assimilation theory was based on the assumption of individualistic adaptation, with immigrants and their children expected to shed their ethnic identities to become Americans. In the sphere of religion, however, they could maintain their communitarian traditions through American denominations. In contemporary society, multiculturalism, spiritual seeking, and postdenominationalism have reversed this paradigm. First- and second-generation immigrants integrate by remaining ethnic and group-identified, but religion is viewed as a personal quest. This paper examines how this paradigm shift affects the ethnic and religious behavior of second-generation Americans. It is based on research among Malankara Syrian Christians belonging to an ancient South Indian community.     

State homophobia? India’s shifting UN positions on LGBTQ issues

Why has India adopted contradictory policies with regard to LGBTQ rights at the UN? From 2004 to 2010, India consistently supported draft language for a UN resolution to allow a Special Rapporteur to investigate extra-judicial executions that would include the term ‘sexual orientation’. More recently, however, India has opposed or abstained from UN votes on LGBTQ rights. While India's conservative posture on LGBTQ issues was catalyzed by the Supreme Court's re-criminalization of homosexual activities in 2013 and the rise of the Hindu nationalist BJP, we argue that the state's posture is not a reflection of deep ideological commitments or a new strategic realignment. Instead, India's policy reflects a generally uncoordinated foreign policy apparatus that has been unprepared to respond to the rapid ascendancy of LGBTQ issues on the human rights agenda. It is not currently possible to predict India's future posture due to its lack of a clear policy commitments.     

The Ayodhya aftermath: Hindu versus Muslim violence in Britain

This destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, India, led to a week of unprecedented Hindu versus Muslim violence in the UK. Some Muslims, viewing Ayodhya as the latest manifestation of worldwide anti‐Islamic sentiment, today seek separation from mainstream British society as the best way to defend their interests. Many UK Hindus also desire to unite and strengthen their community by embracing the ‘fundamentalist’ politics of overseas organizations. Yet other British South Asians ‐ Hindu, Muslim and Sikh ‐ argue that only when all the country's ethnic minorities unite will their common enemies of racism and discrimination be defeated, and integration achieved.     

Participative Immigrants or Participative Cultures? The Importance of Cultural Heritage in Determining Involvement in Associations

This paper uses insights from the literature on social capital and from the sociology of values to explain dependency of immigrants’ involvement in associations depend on the norms of participation in their country of origin as well as the norms of their host countries. The argument is that changing the social context should lead to changing participative behaviours. I use cross-classified multilevel models on the EVS 2008 data to test if average levels of participation in the host and in the origin society determine immigrants’ propensity to become member in voluntary organizations. The findings point to a partial assimilation of immigrants. Their behaviours, while influenced by their culture of origin, are mainly shaped by their country of residence. The relation is influenced by the differences between the patterns of participation in the two cultures, the age when migrating and the dependency of the origin on remittances.     

At both ends of care: South Indian hindu widows living with daughters and daughters-in-law in Southern California

Abstract

Based on interviews with South Indian Hindu immigrant widows and the daughters and daughters-in-law they live with in Southern California, this article makes visible the care-giving and care-receiving roles of such widows, especially in relation to the household roles of these widows' daughters and daughters-in-law. The article explains the variability of the widows' care roles by focusing on three specific phenomena distinguishing their First World experience from that of paid, immigrant care workers: 1) a greater need for non-monetary resources than for monetary payment; 2) a ‘care shift’ from giving to receiving care as they age; and 3) an ability to move from one adopted/adoptive household to another. These phenomena suggest that the same forces of modernization, (post)industrialization, and globalization that have circumscribed many Third World women's status in First World households have simultaneously diversified the status and role of middle-class, South Indian Hindu widows living in their children's First World households.     

Discursive representations and policy mobility: how migrant remittances became a ‘development tool’

In this article, I focus on two sets of practices that researchers and policy advocates carry out within international organizations and think tanks promoting what I term the remittances‐to‐development (R‐2‐D) agenda. Their work conjured up, elaborated and diffused a representation of remittances as a financial flow and made remittances visible as a promising source of development finance for the global South. First, there is the work of discursive representation in which the advocates of the R‐2‐D agenda collected, compiled and visually represented data to draw out the characteristics of remittances that would make them attractive to development policymakers. Second, there were the policy transfer efforts, in which the champions of the R‐2‐D agenda wielded various forms of soft power to convince national government officials to ‘improve’ remittances statistics by adopting new measurement techniques. These practices turned remittances into a neoliberal development tool.     

Mainstream and Ethnic Volunteering by Korean Immigrants in the United States

Asian immigrants accounted for one-eighth of the total U.S. population in 2009. With Asian immigrants having higher levels of education and income than average Americans, their potential contribution to American philanthropy will be even more significant. This study examines the volunteering patterns of Korean immigrants, one of the fastest growing segments of the Asian immigrant population in the United States. This study explains Korean immigrants’ volunteering within ethnic and mainstream (American) organizations using the concepts of bonding and bridging social capital. The bivariate probit regression results suggest that ethnic volunteering and mainstream volunteering are generally the substitutes for each other. The findings nevertheless suggest that providing Asian immigrants’ with English education and continuing education opportunities may boost their volunteering to mainstream nonprofit organizations without discouraging their volunteering for ethnic organizations.     

Merchandizing the Sacred: Commodifying Hindu Religion,Gods/Goddesses,and Festivals in the United States

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened the gates for immigrants from India, who have come to the United States for various reasons other than religion. Their religious consciousness has grown along with the age of their children who are born in the United States. They have felt the need to retain and hand down their tradition and culture. In the process, sustaining their tradition and culture has become equivalent with religion, so they express it through rituals and festivals. With these festive observances has developed an intimate connection between commerce and religion, fashion and festival, celebration and consumption. In this scholarly essay, I analyze how Hindu religion has succumbed to the world of advertisements, mass production, and marketing in the United States. This aspect is significant because it gives an opportunity to conceptualize a larger transnational space that deals with Hindu religious practices and sees the participation of retailers and businesses located in various Hindu diasporic spaces using various marketing media strategically.     

Crafting places through mobility: Chinese American “roots‐searching” in China

A cultural heritage tour to China that is jointly sponsored by Chinese American organizations and the People's Republic of China government represents the “forging” (Schein 1998) of a transnational relationship between Chinese Americans and China through which Chinese Americans re‐assess their identities. Multicultural discourses in the United States and mainland Chinese government narratives of modernity produce racialized and territorialized ideas of Chineseness that forcibly attach Chinese American identities to their places of ancestral origin in China. In contrast, the Chinese American participants in this program draw from cultural and historical references formed through their experiences in the United States and use their privileges of mobility to experience their ancestral places in China in ways that draw upon multiple understandings of their relationships to China as a place. Their visits reflect transnational processes that are built upon yet qualitatively differ from those of previous generations.     

Assimilating to a White Identity: The Case of Arab Americans1

Racial identity is one of the primary means by which immigrants assimilate to the United States. Drawing from the tenets of segmented assimilation, this study examines how the ethnic traits of immigrant status, national origin, religious affiliation, and Arab Americaness contribute to the announcement of a white racial identity using a regionally representative sample of Arab Americans. Results illustrate that those who were Lebanese/Syrian or Christian, and those who felt that the term “Arab American” does not describe them, were more likely to identify as white. In addition, among those who affirmed that the pan‐ethnic term “Arab American” does describe them, results illustrated that strongly held feelings about being Arab American and associated actions were also linked with a higher likelihood of identifying as white. Findings point to different patterns of assimilation among Arab Americans. Some segments of Arab Americans appear to report both strong ethnic and white identities, while others report a strong white identity, yet distance themselves from the pan‐ethnic “Arab American” label.     

THE SECOND GENERATION IN "BIG D": KOREAN AMERICAN AND INDIAN AMERICAN ORGANIZATIONS IN DALLAS,TEXAS

Asian American professionals who have grown up in the United States and attained upper-middle class status frequently join ethnic organizations. Yet, what motivates these professionals to join and how their organizations frame their communities deserve greater attention, for racial and ethnic solidarity supposedly decline with greater class status. This research analyzes what kinds of organizations that second generation Korean and Indian Americans create in Dallas, Texas and why. Ultimately, the organizations and their members demonstrate that race and ethnic culture do not lose relevance for individuals with greater economic standing, but instead their class position shapes how they interpret their ethnic minority status. Despite their economic status, individuals felt labeled as racially different and as "foreigners" from White peers while growing up, and seek greater comfort with co-ethnics in organizations. The organizations promote another racial stereotype, as the economically-successful model minority, in order to fight the image of the perpetual foreigner. The Dallas culture, population size, and economy encourage organizational endorsement of the model minority stereotype. Members also join associations to maintain those parts of their ethnic heritage that fitwith American norms. The organizations, however, downplay the significance of culture as they focus on the model minority image. The model minority stereotype excludes some individuals from joining the organizations and eventually can hurt the communities, even as the organizations promote it in part to alleviateproblems.     

Religious Belief Transformation: A Study of This Worldly Religion*

The controversy over contemporary this worldly religious beliefs’social effects is reviewed. Critics of cultic religious degenerations and eroding moral consensus disagree with cultural relativists on the central themes of today's this worldly religions, their relation to more classical other worldly religious themes, and the appropriate group for evaluating this worldly religions’effects. These general issues are addressed through a content analytic study of the Transcendental Meditation Movement's belief system. Over a twenty-year span, other worldly Hindu themes were displaced by familiar this worldly religious themes, including this worldly benefits, practical utilitarianism, instrumentalized techniques, scientific authority, and God's accessibility for humanity's purposes. Religious belief transformation advanced as an integrated process interacting with movement organizational developments. Still, it is argued that criticisms of contemporary this worldly religions as causes of classical other worldly religious decline are spurious and obscure the integrative potential of minority religious beliefs.     

Political Economy,Social Movements and State Power: A Marxian Perspective on Two Decades of Resistance to the Narmada Dam Projects*

Abstract In this article, I put forward a Marxian analysis of the conflict over dam-building on the Narmada River in central and western India, which seeks to bring out how in this specific conflict it is possible to discern the workings of the master change processes that have moulded the Indian trajectory of postcolonial capitalist development. I start by showing how the concrete case of dispossession in the Narmada Valley is expressive of how the development strategies that defined the postcolonial nation-building project have been moulded in such a way as to create a de facto transfer of productive resources to the country's dominant proprietary classes. I then move on to argue that these features of the political economy of India's postcolonial development project can be understood as the sediment of struggles between social movements from above and below in the decades immediately prior to Independence. Arguing that the postcolonial development project has unravelled, I outline the fundamentals of an analysis of the characteristics of social movements from below in the conflictual field of force which is emerging in its wake. Finally, I draw on the trajectory of resistance to dam-building on the Narmada to articulate a series of reflections on the nature of state power in India and the possibilities that might exist for the state to function as an enabling space for the struggles of subaltern social groups.