About the Book
This volume brings into focus a range of emergent issues related to women in the Indian diaspora. The conditions propelling women’s migration and their experiences during the process of migration and settlement have always been different and very specific to them. Standing ‘in-between’ the two worlds of origin and adoption, women tend to experience dialectic tensions between freedom and subjugation, but they often use this space to assert independence, and to redefine their roles and perceptions of self. The central idea in this volume is to understand women’s agency in addressing and redressing the complex issues faced by them; in restructuring the cultural formats of patriarchy and gender relations; managing the emerging conflicts over what is to be transmitted to the following generations,; renegotiating their domestic roles and embracing new professional and educational successes; and adjusting to the institutional structures of the host state. The essays included in the volume discuss women in the Indian diaspora from multidisciplinary perspectives involving social, economic, cultural, and political aspects. Such an effort privileges diasporic women’s experiences and perspectives in the academia and among policy makers.
Contents
1. Women in Indian Diaspora: Redefining Self Between Dislocation and Relocation / Amba Pande
Part I: The Context of Theory and Identity
2. Centring Gendered Narratives of the Indian Diaspora / Sandhya Rao Mehta
3. The Rhetoric of Deliberation and the Space of the Hyphen: Identity Politics of the Indian Women Diaspora in the Fictions of Jhumpa Lahiri / Nabanita Chakraborty
4. Freedom or Subjugation: Interpreting the Subjectivity of Women in Indian Diaspora Communities / Sheetal Sharma
Part II: Revisiting Historical Narratives
5. Indian Indentured Women in the Caribbeans and the Role Model of Ramayana’s Sita: An Unequal Metaphor / Archana Tewari
6. ‘The Men Who Controlled Indian Women’—Indentureship, Patriarchy and Women’s ‘Liberation’ in Trinidad / Radica Mahase
7. Tamil Women of the Diaspora: Indentured to Independence / Bernard D’Sami
Part III: The Contemporary Challenges
8. Fitting in: The Joys and Challenges of Being an Indian Woman in America / Mahua Bhattacharya
9. Three Tamil Diasporic Women’s One Mission: Discover New Identities / Gopalan Ravindran
10. Gender Differentials of Indian Knowledge and Service Workers in the US Labour Market: A Comparative Analysis in the Context of ‘Age, Wage, and Vintage’ Premia / Narender Thakur, Binod Khadria
11. Unemployed Female Skilled Migrants from India in the Netherlands: The Entrepreneurial Self Under Structural Dependency / Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff, Kate Kirk
Part IV: Diasporas Across the World
12. Curry and Race: Gender, Diaspora and Food in South Africa / Movindri Reddy
13. Diversities, Continuities and Discontinuities of Tradition in the Contemporary Sikh Diaspora: Gender and Social Dimensions / Shinder S. Thandi
14. Anglo-Indian Women: A Narrative of Matriarchy in a Global Diaspora / Ann Lobo
15. Lived Experiences of Sikh Women in Canada: Past and Present / Amrit Kaur Basra
About the Author / Editor
Amba Pande, Centre for Indo-Pacific Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
