Twelve years ago, a crowd of Non-Resident Indians descended upon Delhi. Some 1,890 delegates paid a hefty Rs 12,000 to participate in the first ever Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (the fee is now Rs 20,000). Each year since then, around January 9, whether in the usually cold and foggy capital or in a more hospitable city, businessmen, professionals, social workers and politicians of Indian origin congregate in what has become a three-day-long expat mega-mela.
The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas has marked a new era: India’s honeymoon – or at least renewed love story – with its diaspora after years of deriding NRIs as “Not Required in India” and “Not Really Indian”, expressions often used by the press till the late 1990s.
Things started to change in 1998, during the National Democratic Alliance’s first stint in power. Following the nuclear tests in Pokhran and the US-imposed economic sanctions, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government floated bonds aimed at the diaspora. Favourable interest rates on the one hand and the financial maturity of Indian-Americans on the other ensured that the scheme was a success. Besides, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and more widely the Sangh Parivar, had long cultivated its international networks. The first shakha of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh outside India was established as early as 1940.
Sangh Parivar fest
When the NDA came back to power in 1999 and ruled in Delhi for the next five years, its transnational networks, that had so largely contributed to BJP’s rise in terms of lobbying as well as fund-raising, came to prominence. And one of the first things the government did was to nominate a High-Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora and commission a report. The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas was one of its main recommendations.
Similar events had been organised by the governments of Israel, China, Mexico and Armenia before. But India is the only country that celebrates its diaspora for several days in a row, and that is not even including individual states’ celebrations like the Vibrant Gujarat summit, generally held right after the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.
The first Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, in 2003, was a Sangh Parivar fest, with many Sangh branches in attendance. I attended the first 10 Pravasi Bharatiya Divas for my doctoral and post-doctoral research on the Indian diaspora. The first year, I remember collecting a number of brochures and flyers distributed by the Vishva Hindu Parishad and the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, the RSS’s US avatar. That first year, 48 of the 179 “diaspora organisations” represented in the event and listed by the organisers in a booklet distributed to the delegates were Sangh Parivar affiliates. All this was clearly a way for the NDA to commemorate and honour their very strong international supporters.
Global Indian family
But by no means was the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas aimed at being divisive. On the contrary, it strove to project an image of unity and continuity. The diaspora was, and still is, repeatedly presented as a homogeneous group – a fiction that the lumping together of extremely diverse groups under the umbrella term “diaspora” perpetuates.
Over the years, the NRIs and Persons of Indian Origin from rich Anglo-Saxon countries were feted while others were marginalised. Success stories of post-1965 migrations to the US were highlighted and the harsh memory of the indenture system largely cast aside. Now Mahatma Gandhi is being reappropriated as “a pravasi Bharatiya” and “the first NRI”. In 2015, the centenary of Gandhi’s return to India from South Africa on the January 9, 1915, the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas will be held in Gandhinagar, a tribute to the Mahatma in the heart of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state.
The point of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is to showcase India’s unity and present the country as a transnational nation that incorporates the 30-million strong diaspora and is built upon supposedly shared cultural values in a fictional historical continuum. The metaphor of “the global Indian family” that unites resident and non-resident Indians (and Persons of Indian Origin) serves this fiction of continuity and unity in diversity. During the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, India is presented as a great transnational civilization and as a nation with a strong soft power and with strong lobbies, especially in Washington.
Welcome home
However, a close look at the people who are invited and at the people who are able and willing to pay Rs 20,000 to attend a government- and FICCI-sponsored event reveals that certain members of “the great Indian family” are perhaps more welcome or at least more sought after than others.
Judging from the delegates’ directories distributed each year, more than 75% of the participants on average are male and the most represented age group is people between 46 and 55, followed by the 56-65 age bracket. Country-wise, the majority (although not in absolute terms) comes from three countries: the USA, the UK and Mauritius (a long-time commercial partner of India, with more than 70% of its population being of Indian origin). These affluent, middle-aged men are overwhelmingly north Indian and a large portion of them, like the Marwaris, come from specific merchant communities.
What India’s honeymoon with the diaspora really is, is a honeymoon with the middle to upper class, upper caste, investment-friendly desi uncles. And it is likely that some of those feting Narendra Modi in Madison Square Garden in September will be in Gandhinagar for the 13th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas. But, let’s not be mistaken: regardless of who is in power in Delhi, whether the BJP or the Congress, these are the only NRIs that really matter. The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is as much a mega-mela as a 21st century equivalent of a durbar, where successive governments of India give audience to various NRIs hoping for facilities in investment and other privileges in return for support and allegiance.
Pride parade
Since 2003, the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas has also reinforced ethnicity as a base for belonging to India, especially with the Overseas Citizenship of India card. So far, this misnamed card is a proof of secondary nationality but not an actual dual citizenship. The day when India grants the long-standing demand for voting rights to persons of Indian origin, a full overseas dual citizenship based on ethnicity will be achieved. In 2004, India abolished the jus soli – the right of soil, which grants citizenship to anyone born on the national territory regardless of the parents’ citizenship. And its tryst with the diaspora further reinforces its attachment to the jus sanguinis, the right of blood.
This inclusion of overseas yet ethnic Indians has to be understood in correlation with the increasing exclusion of various people residing in India but construed as outside the national fold whether for ethnic, religious or other reasons.
In this respect, the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, whose slogan this year is “Apna Bharat, Apna Gaurav”, actually is an Ethnic Pride Show. A Pride Parade that cost India Rs 7.86 crore in 2003. A reasonable figure compared to this year’s Rs 148.98 crore. No doubt, Indian pride is soaring.
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The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas has marked a new era: India’s honeymoon – or at least renewed love story – with its diaspora after years of deriding NRIs as “Not Required in India” and “Not Really Indian”, expressions often used by the press till the late 1990s.
Things started to change in 1998, during the National Democratic Alliance’s first stint in power. Following the nuclear tests in Pokhran and the US-imposed economic sanctions, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government floated bonds aimed at the diaspora. Favourable interest rates on the one hand and the financial maturity of Indian-Americans on the other ensured that the scheme was a success. Besides, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and more widely the Sangh Parivar, had long cultivated its international networks. The first shakha of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh outside India was established as early as 1940.
Sangh Parivar fest
When the NDA came back to power in 1999 and ruled in Delhi for the next five years, its transnational networks, that had so largely contributed to BJP’s rise in terms of lobbying as well as fund-raising, came to prominence. And one of the first things the government did was to nominate a High-Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora and commission a report. The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas was one of its main recommendations.
Similar events had been organised by the governments of Israel, China, Mexico and Armenia before. But India is the only country that celebrates its diaspora for several days in a row, and that is not even including individual states’ celebrations like the Vibrant Gujarat summit, generally held right after the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.
The first Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, in 2003, was a Sangh Parivar fest, with many Sangh branches in attendance. I attended the first 10 Pravasi Bharatiya Divas for my doctoral and post-doctoral research on the Indian diaspora. The first year, I remember collecting a number of brochures and flyers distributed by the Vishva Hindu Parishad and the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, the RSS’s US avatar. That first year, 48 of the 179 “diaspora organisations” represented in the event and listed by the organisers in a booklet distributed to the delegates were Sangh Parivar affiliates. All this was clearly a way for the NDA to commemorate and honour their very strong international supporters.
Global Indian family
But by no means was the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas aimed at being divisive. On the contrary, it strove to project an image of unity and continuity. The diaspora was, and still is, repeatedly presented as a homogeneous group – a fiction that the lumping together of extremely diverse groups under the umbrella term “diaspora” perpetuates.
Over the years, the NRIs and Persons of Indian Origin from rich Anglo-Saxon countries were feted while others were marginalised. Success stories of post-1965 migrations to the US were highlighted and the harsh memory of the indenture system largely cast aside. Now Mahatma Gandhi is being reappropriated as “a pravasi Bharatiya” and “the first NRI”. In 2015, the centenary of Gandhi’s return to India from South Africa on the January 9, 1915, the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas will be held in Gandhinagar, a tribute to the Mahatma in the heart of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state.
The point of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is to showcase India’s unity and present the country as a transnational nation that incorporates the 30-million strong diaspora and is built upon supposedly shared cultural values in a fictional historical continuum. The metaphor of “the global Indian family” that unites resident and non-resident Indians (and Persons of Indian Origin) serves this fiction of continuity and unity in diversity. During the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, India is presented as a great transnational civilization and as a nation with a strong soft power and with strong lobbies, especially in Washington.
Welcome home
However, a close look at the people who are invited and at the people who are able and willing to pay Rs 20,000 to attend a government- and FICCI-sponsored event reveals that certain members of “the great Indian family” are perhaps more welcome or at least more sought after than others.
Judging from the delegates’ directories distributed each year, more than 75% of the participants on average are male and the most represented age group is people between 46 and 55, followed by the 56-65 age bracket. Country-wise, the majority (although not in absolute terms) comes from three countries: the USA, the UK and Mauritius (a long-time commercial partner of India, with more than 70% of its population being of Indian origin). These affluent, middle-aged men are overwhelmingly north Indian and a large portion of them, like the Marwaris, come from specific merchant communities.
What India’s honeymoon with the diaspora really is, is a honeymoon with the middle to upper class, upper caste, investment-friendly desi uncles. And it is likely that some of those feting Narendra Modi in Madison Square Garden in September will be in Gandhinagar for the 13th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas. But, let’s not be mistaken: regardless of who is in power in Delhi, whether the BJP or the Congress, these are the only NRIs that really matter. The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is as much a mega-mela as a 21st century equivalent of a durbar, where successive governments of India give audience to various NRIs hoping for facilities in investment and other privileges in return for support and allegiance.
Pride parade
Since 2003, the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas has also reinforced ethnicity as a base for belonging to India, especially with the Overseas Citizenship of India card. So far, this misnamed card is a proof of secondary nationality but not an actual dual citizenship. The day when India grants the long-standing demand for voting rights to persons of Indian origin, a full overseas dual citizenship based on ethnicity will be achieved. In 2004, India abolished the jus soli – the right of soil, which grants citizenship to anyone born on the national territory regardless of the parents’ citizenship. And its tryst with the diaspora further reinforces its attachment to the jus sanguinis, the right of blood.
This inclusion of overseas yet ethnic Indians has to be understood in correlation with the increasing exclusion of various people residing in India but construed as outside the national fold whether for ethnic, religious or other reasons.
In this respect, the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, whose slogan this year is “Apna Bharat, Apna Gaurav”, actually is an Ethnic Pride Show. A Pride Parade that cost India Rs 7.86 crore in 2003. A reasonable figure compared to this year’s Rs 148.98 crore. No doubt, Indian pride is soaring.