WORLD AFFAIRS

With roots in India

A convention in New York of People of Indian Origin discusses issues that matter to the Indian diaspora worldwide.

EUGENE CORREIA
in New York

A CAB-DRIVER in Southall in London, the President of a Caribbean republic, and a computer engineer in Seattle, United States: three persons, who, given their lifestyles and stations in life, might well be from different planets. Yet they are bound by a curious emotional cord to a shared geographical space that they consider their "real home", or watan. All three are persons of Indian origin, members of the Indian diaspora, spread worldwide.

A representative group of the People of Indian Origin - though the number of representatives was far too low, considering the size of the PIO community - gathered recently in New York for the Indian Global Convention, organised by the Global Organisation of Indian People (GOPIO), a pan-global organisation that seeks to bring together more than 18 million people of Indian origin worldwide. GOPIO aims, among other things, to address the concerns of the PIO in their countries of settlement and to utilise the expertise of Indian expatriates for the benefit of people in India and the countries where the PIO are settled.

Deliberations at the convention were given over to making follow-up suggestions on the Indian government's programme of issuing identity cards to People of Indian Origin. The PIO cards are intended to give their holders certain privileges - for instance, in the repatriation of income. Persons whose ancestors up to the third generation were persons of Indian origin are eligible to apply for the card by paying a fee of $1,000. The convention adopted resolutions urging the Indian government to consider extending the eligibility for PIO cards to those who are sixth-generation PIOs and lowering the fee to $250.

The presence of Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo, 35, a person of Indian origin, in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly session, gave the convention a high profile. Jagdeo and his political mentor Cheddi Jagan have inspired two generations of Caribbean Indians, and the former is a role model for a generation of PIO who exemplify the theme of the convention, People of Indian Origin: Forging a global alliance. Jagdeo's presence also drew a large contingent of Guyanese Indians from the Queens area in New York.

One of the resolutions passed at the convention called on the Guyanese government to institute an independent inquiry into the alleged atrocities against Indians in that country and to ensure that the ethnic balance was preserved in appointments to the government and the armed services. Indians make up more than half the population but are not adequately represented in the police and the army; this is significant when one considers that the Caribbean country has witnessed many ethnic riots.

SOME of the speakers at the convention seemed keen to impose a Hindi-Hindu worldview on the gathering although the move met with a degree of resistance from a section. The attempts at seeking to emphasise the divisive aspects of a culturally heterogeneous diaspora raised more than a few questions. For instance, one of the resolutions called for the adoption of a "first language" by GOPIO members and delegates. Although it was not explicitly stated, the reference was to Hindi. (The resolution said that given India's linguistic diversity, English had served as an effective link language and served as a door to the world for many Indians.) When a section of the gathering questioned the purpose of this resolution, the chairperson said that its aim was to keep alive in expatriate Indian communities "traditions and religious and spiritual identities".

Similar sentiments found resonance at a session on "Secularism, religion and the national ethos". Speaking on "Focus on Indian culture in the diaspora", Reshmi Ramdhony, senior lecturer and head of Hindi Studies at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute in Mauritius, proposed that GOPIO undertake an "intra-diasporic compilation ... of all the cultural symbols that still thrive." Such an approach, Ramdhony said, "would not only serve to revitalise and syncretise Hindu faith and Indianness in plural societies but would also help PIOs to address the needs posed by their living far, far away from the Indian mainstream."

Another speaker, Parasram S. Thakur of Community College, Rhode Island, said that Hinduism had been grossly "misunderstood and misinterpreted". Thakur said: "The idea of polytheism, paganism and heathenism, attributed to Hinduism..., is derived from the ignorance of Western Euro-centric scholars, and the exclusivity of Christian dogmatic intolerance for external ideas."

GOPIO-India president Harish Mahajan used the platform he was provided to make undisguised communal statements. In his paper, "Wisdom of religious conversions", Mahajan criticised "Christian pundits" for not responding to Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee's call for a national debate on religious conversions, following the attack on Christian places of worship in Gujarat last year. Conversions, he said, were proceeding "unabated" without any concern for the "likely implications", including the possibility that "serious reactions" might recur. Mahajan's case was that Christian missionaries were "on the prowl" and were proselytising people "in the garb of service to and upliftment of the deprived ignorants of India." Conversions, he added, were causing "serious emotional hurt" to the majority community in India - which numerically exceeded the combined populations of the United States, Canada and Europe.

GOPIO may not have acquired the saffron hue of the Overseas Friends of BJP, a powerful pressure group that is active in the U.S., but the dangers of its providing a platform for hate campaigns are self-evident. It was left to secular-minded scholars such as Sebastian Devasia, Rajiv Gandhi Professor for World Order Studies, New Delhi, to challenge Mahajan's chauvinistic ramblings. GOPIO secretary-general Dr. Jagat Motwani, who chaired the session, put the issue to rest by stating that the subject was too controversial to be discussed.

THE most telling remarks on the problems and issues affecting the Indian diasporic communities came from noted West Indian historian Dr. Brinsley Samaroo, who called for solidarity among Indians the world over in order to prevent any further abuse or discrimination in their adopted lands.

Samaroo wanted Indians to come together to "offer that continuing spiritual guidance to the wider world which so desperately needs the sustaining spiritual force, such as that which Mahatmaji unleashed in his epic struggle against the British empire with its enormous technological power."

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

On the opening day of the Indian Global Convention, organised by the Global Organisation of Indian People in New York. The convention made several follow-up suggestions on the Indian Government's programme of issuing identity cards to People of Indian Origin.

Speaking on "Sharing the inheritance", Samaroo said: "Indians, wherever they are and in whatever circumstances they find themselves, must cease to be apologetic and defensive about their culture and their civilisation." He wanted the Indian diasporic communities to follow the "African diaspora" in facilitating cultural fusion in each "diasporic settlement", instead of being "too preoccupied with small disputes and internecine warfare whilst the large picture eludes our focus."

Dr. Chandrasekhar Bhat of the Study for the Indian Diaspora, Hyderabad, echoed the same sentiments in his paper on "Contexts of intra and inter ethnic conflict among the Indian diaspora communities", and offered examples of identity clashes between what he calls the Older Diaspora and the New Diaspora. He feels that "a major domain of intra-ethnic conflict today among the Indian diaspora is religion". He notes that Operation Bluestar "left its scars" on the Hindu and Sikh communities in Britain.

Bhat said that caste too played a role in the power structure of particular communities. In this context, he pointed out that there were two associations representing Telugu people in the U.S. - the Telugu Association of North America (TANA), made up largely of people belonging to the Kamma caste, and the American Telugu Association (ATA), comprising Reddys.

ON the eve of the convention, Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati, Professor of Economics and Political Science at Columbia University, told a local newspaper that immigration from India was no longer considered brain drain but rather a phenomenon "serving almost an overseas arm of Indian culture and prosperity."

He said: "In that sense, an institution like GOPIO is useful. Indians are playing a major role here but I think we need to cast our net wide and see what is happening around the world to our community and people who are descended from India."

Dr. Thomas Abraham, GOPIO president, recalled that since it was founded in 1989 in New York, the organisation had come some way but its operations were hampered by a financial crunch. Going by the number of participants at the convention, it appears that GOPIO has not reached out to many persons of Indian origin even in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Abraham had earlier served as president of the Federation of Indian Associations (FIA) and the National Federation of Indian American Associations (NFIA).

The first Global Convention of People of Indian Origin was held in New York in 1989 and was attended by an estimated 3,000 delegates. Four years later, a second convention was held in New Delhi; it was inaugurated by then Guyanese President Cheddi Jagan and presided over by Dr. Karan Singh. Dr. Najma Heptullah and Atal Behari Vajpayee delivered the keynote speeches. A constitution was formally adopted and office-bearers were elected. Abraham was elected president. An international secretariat was set up in New York in 1994. (It operates from the residence of a PIO and is run on a voluntary basis.)

In the ten years of its existence, GOPIO has taken up with the U.N. the issue of human rights violations in Fiji and Sri Lanka. In 1994, it came up with the idea of the PIO card, sensing that the Indian government was reluctant to consider dual-citizenship.

Like many other associations in the U.S. that claim to represent the Indian diaspora, GOPIO has grand visions of bringing PIOs under one global banner. However, given its current pattern of membership, its plans appear to be overly ambitious. It has no more than 150 life members, and its ordinary members number about 100. Much of the organisational work is carried on with personal contributions from office-bearers.

The constitution of GOPIO envisages a three-tier body with a global convention, an executive council, and an executive committee. There is to be a human rights commission, an international advisory council and a credentials committee.

The international secretariat is operational, but this is not the case with the regional structures. There are no organised structures even in countries such as Canada. Given GOPIO's current plight, it may be a long while before it sets out to achieve its stated objectives.