New Indian Diaspora

what is meant by New Indian Diaspora? Indians who emigrated from India in the twentieth century to the developed countries in North America, Europe, Oceania and West Asia.

The new Indian diaspora consists of those Indians who emigrated from India in the twentieth century, that is, late modern of late capitalist or postmodern dispersal of new migrants of all classes mainly to the thriving metropolitan centres of developed countries in North America, Europe, Oceania and West Asia. This was mainly a post-second World War phenomenon and the moment of (post)modern ascendancy, with globalization and hypermobility. 

Phenomenal changes in the political and economic scenario of the receiving and sending countries led to their new wave of international migration. There was a shift during this period in the direction and magnitude of international migration and composition of the migrants. The history of emigration from India and other Asian countries to the four English – speaking metropolitan developed centers of empire of other white settler countries, namely, the United States of America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, has been similar as a part of a post – 1960s pattern of global migration.

During the mid-nineteenth century, there was a substantial migration of Chinese gold diggers to the gold fields of California, British Columbia, the east coast of Australia and the west coast of New Zealand. This led to white agitation in all the four countries, which ultimately led to restrictions on their immigration by the late 1880s. During the period 1897-1924, legislations were enacted in these countries to prevent the Asian immigration. 

The restriction was in force until the 1950s and the 1960s. During this period, the main inflow to these countries was from Europe. An important turning point occurred during the early 1960s marking the beginning of a new phase. In the 1960s, in these countries, all restrictions on Asian immigration were removed and Asians were allowed to immigrate
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In the 1960s, the emigration of Indian professionals was mainly to the UK. In the 1970s, Canada and the USA overtook the UK. In the beginning, doctors, engineers, scientists, managers, architects, teachers and nurses migrated. In the later decades, IT professionals and entrepreneurs left India. About 20,000 graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have settled in the US. In 1999, in Silicon Valley, 40% of the 2,000 dot com business companies were owned by the Indians. They accounted for 15% of high-tech startups and their average annual income was around US $ 2,00,000. The US has around 3,00,000 Indo-Caribbeans and Indo-Fijians.

‘Multiculturalism’ as a national policy in 1971 in Canada led to a steep increase in Indian immigration from 6774 in 1961 to 68000 in 1971. Before 1961, there were only 3360 Indo-Canadians in Canada. In the 1976 Immigration Act, Canada institutionalized fair admission practices and also encouraged family reunification and admission of refugees. Hindus and Sikhs comprised 1% and 0.9% of the country’s population, respectively.

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For more information, click on Diaspora, Brain Gain, Brain Drain in Indian Context, Brain Drain,  Brain Exchange, Brain Waste,  Brain Gain in Indian Context, Brain Circulation, Indian Diaspora, Old Indian Diaspora

Reference:

• Dr Johannes G De Kruijf, Dr Ajaya Kumar Sahoo (edited), Indian Transnationalism Online: New Perspectives on Diaspora.
• Vijay Mishra, The Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary.
• Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, A History of Indian Literature in English.
• Ajaya Kumar Sahoo and Laxmi Narayan Kadekar (edited), Global Indian Diaspora: History, Culture and Identity.

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Related Questions:

Understanding concept of New Indian Diaspora.

Statistical analysis of New Indian Diaspora.

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