Indians And The Antipodes

The Indian diaspora in Australia and New Zealand represents a successful ethnic community making significant contributions to their host societies and economies. However, because of their small number—slightly more than half a million— they rarely find mention in the global literature on Indian diaspora. The present volume seeks to remedy this oversight. Charting the chequered 250-year-old history of both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ diaspora in the antipodes, the chapters narrate the stories of labourers who journeyed under the pressure of colonial capital and post-war professional migrants who went in search of better opportunities. In the context of the ‘White Australia’ and ‘White New Zealand’ policies designed to stem the arrival of Asians in the early twentieth century, we read of the complex survival stratagems adopted by migrants to circumvent the stringent insular world view of the existing white settlers in these countries. Together with stories of the collective suffering and struggles of the diaspora, we are presented with stories of individual resilience, enterprise, and social mobility.

Revisionist in approach, global in scope, and a seminal contribution to scholarship, this original and thought-provoking book critiques traditional notions about Anglo-Indians, a mixed descent minority community from India. It interrogates traditional notions about Anglo-Indian identity from a range of disciplines, perspectives and locations. This work situates itself as a transnational intermediary, identifying convergences and bridging scholarship on Anglo-Indian studies in India and the diaspora. Anglo-Indian identity is presented as hybridised and fluid and is seen as being representative, performative, affective and experiential through different interpretative theoretical frameworks and methodologies. Uniquely, this book is an international collaborative effort by leading scholars in Anglo-Indian Studies, and examines the community in India and diverse diasporic locations such as New Zealand, Britain, Australia, Pakistan and Burma.

Hindu Diasporas presents the histories and religious traditions of Hindus with a South Asian ancestral background living outside of South Asia. Hinduism is a global religion with a significant presence in many countries throughout the world. The most important cause of this global expansion is migration. This book presents and analyses the most important of the geographies, migration histories, religious traditions and developments, rituals, places, institutions, and representations of Hinduism in the diasporas, capturing some of the great plurality of Hindu religious traditions. The first part of the book concentrates on the major regions in the world in which Hindu diasporas are found. The main focus is the modern period, but the book discusses also the possibility of premodern Hindu diasporas in Southeast Asia. The second part focuses on specific central themes such as Vaishnava, Shaiva, and Shakta traditions in diasporas, temples, and traditions of sacred sites and pilgrimage outside of South Asia, Hindutva organizations and the diaspora, as well as relations between Hindu diasporas and new followers of Hindu traditions. The chapters in this book show some of the global presence of the Hindu diasporas and some of the dynamic developments in multiple geographical spaces. Analysing specific spaces and themes, the chapters of the book offer a foundation for understanding the Hindu traditions in its most important global diasporic contexts and the dynamic developments around the world.

This book explores the emergence of 'Australasia' as a way of thinking about the culture and geography of this region. Although it is frequently understood to apply only to Australia and New Zealand, the concept has a longer and more complicated history. 'Australasia' emerged in the mid-18th century in both French and British writing as European empires extended their reach into Asia and the Pacific, and initially held strong links to the Asian continent. The book shows that interpretations and understandings of 'Australasia' shifted away from Asia in light of British imperial interests in the 19th century, and the concept was adapted by varying political agendas and cultural visions in order to reach into the Pacific or towards Antarctica. The Making and Remaking of Australasia offers a number of rich case studies which highlight how the idea itself was adapted and moulded by people and texts both in the southern hemisphere and the imperial metropole where a range of competing actors articulated divergent visions of this part of the British Empire. An important contribution to the cultural history of the British Empire, Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Studies, this collection shows how 'Australasia' has had multiple, often contrasting, meanings.

On what terms and concepts can we ground the comparative study of Anglophone literatures and cultures around the world today? What, if anything, unites the novels of Witi Ihimaera, the speculative fiction of Nnedi Okorafor, the life-writings by Stuart Hall, and the emerging Anglophone Arab literature by writers like Omar Robert Hamilton? This volume explores the globality of Anglophone fiction both as a conceptual framing and as a literary imaginary. It highlights the diversity of lives and worlds represented in Anglophone writing, as well as the diverse imaginations of transnational connections articulated in it. Featuring a variety of internationally renowned scholars, this book thinks through Anglophone literature not as a problematic legacy of colonial rule or as exoticizing commodity in a global literary marketplace but examines it as an inherently transcultural literary medium. Contributors provide new insights into how it facilitates the articulation of divergent experiences of modernity and the critique of hierarchies and inequalities within, among, and beyond post-colonial societies.