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Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 10:50
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Subject: ugnet_: India Harvests Fruits of
a Diaspora
India Harvests Fruits of a
Diaspora
By AMY
WALDMAN
EW DELHI, Jan. 11 — Sir Shridath Ramphal's grandmother
left India in rebellion 150 years ago, after refusing to throw herself on her
dead husband's funeral pyre. She ended up in indentured servitude in South
America, in what was then the British colony of Guiana. When it became a
nation, her grandson, Sir Shridath, became its first foreign minister.
Dipak C. Jain left India with optimism, heading for Dallas 20 years ago to
work on a doctorate in applied mathematics. He became a professor in
marketing, a field he had never heard of before leaving India, and then dean
of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
This week both men returned to India as part of what was billed as the
largest gathering of the Indian diaspora since independence in 1947. Like most
of the nearly 2,000 "nonresident Indians" and "people of Indian origin" who
made the journey from 63 countries, they were abundantly successful.
Nonetheless, they represented very different strands of one of the world's
largest and most productive diasporas.
The Indian government and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and
Industry, organized the gathering, which ended today, to determine how the
resources and achievements of Indians abroad might be used to uplift India.
While Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in his speech opening the
conference on Thursday that the government was not seeking the diaspora's
riches, but its "richness of experience," the riches could not be ignored.
According to a recent report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company,
the 20 million Indians living abroad generate an annual income equal to 35
percent of India's gross domestic product.
Indians are the largest minority group in Britain and have the highest
income among its minority groups. Indian-Americans have a median income 50
percent higher than the national average for the United States. Yet foreign
direct investment by Indians abroad is only $1 billion, compared with about
$60 billion invested by 55 million overseas Chinese. It is a gap the
government hopes to close.
"We want to create an environment for you so that you can excel in India as
much as you could anywhere else in the world," Mr. Vajpayee said.
To deepen the connection between India and its scattered seed, Mr. Vajpayee
announced on Thursday that legislation would be introduced to grant dual
citizenship to people of Indian origin living in "certain countries," which
officials later tentatively identified as the United States, the United
Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Singapore.
On Friday, Finance Minister Jaswant Singh announced a series of measures to
ease investment overseas. The limit on mutual fund investments in overseas
stock exchanges was doubled, to $1 billion.
Those attending the gathering included the prime minister of Mauritius and
the former prime minister of Fiji, and two Nobel laureates — the economist
Amartya Sen and the writer V. S. Naipaul. There were politicians, scholars,
industrialists and jurists.
More than simply celebrating the "global Indian family," the conference put
India — the brilliance of its minds, the querulousness of its characters, its
perpetual grappling to define its identity — on display.
Mr. Sen encouraged India to remember its long history of interaction with
other civilizations and not to retreat into cultural isolationism. Mr. Naipaul
— who with typically tart precision observed that the gathering "has the
element of the trade fair" — told India to "stop blaming the British for
everything."
There seemed to be as many opinions as there were participants about what
the conference was for, what the meaning of diaspora was, where loyalties
should lie, and what India was and should be.
"We Indian South Africans have had to struggle hard to claim our South
Africanness, and that is something we jealously guard," said Fatima Meer, a
South African anti-apartheid activist. "We are not a diaspora of India."
One divide emerged between affluent professionals prospering in Europe or
America and the descendants of indentured servants who had provided plantation
labor in British colonies across the globe.
"We must guard against this conference focusing too much on how India can
build a relationship with those in the affluent sector of the diaspora, with
little concern for those members of the diaspora who are suffering and whose
rights are under assault," said Fiji's former prime minister, Mahendra P.
Chaudhry, who is of Indian origin.
Dhundev Bauhadoor, a Mauritian who heads the Global Organization of People
of Indian Origin, criticized India for being slow to comment when Mr. Chaudhry
was deposed in a coup and held hostage for 28 days in 2000. "This cannot
continue," he said. "If India is to play her role as mother, she must protect
her children wherever they are."
Bharatkumar J. Shah, a Dubai businessman, spoke for the three million to
four million Indians who have followed the oil boom since the 1970's to work
as laborers in the Persian Gulf. They send more than $300 million annually to
India, yet, he said, India has done too little to protect their rights and
support their families.
On Friday, Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani said all the delegates were
of value to India, but he also said India's influence had widened thanks to
the "high socioeconomic profile the Indian community now commands in the
United States." More than 400 Indian-Americans attended the conference.
Mr. Advani also waded into the debate, prompted by Hindu-Muslim riots in
the state of Gujarat, that has riven India in recent months over its secular
character and that seems to have divided the diaspora as well.
After Mr. Naipaul's wife, Nadira Naipaul, a Muslim from Pakistan,
challenged Mr. Advani to explain the place of Muslims and Christians in India
he replied, "Secularism is so embedded in our thinking there can be no
departure from that."
Of the Gujarat riots, which left about 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead,
he said: "We feel sad, we feel ashamed, we only say it's an aberration, it
must not be repeated. I only say let's have it behind us."
Sixty percent of the Indians in America are from Gujarat. Some at the
conference said they were tired of attacks on the state because of the riots.
"It's high time Gujarat and even the center stop apologizing for what happened
in Gujarat," said Suvas G. Desai, a doctor from Lexington, Ky.
Beyond politics, many of the attendees seemed interested in giving back and
frustrated by how difficult India sometimes made it to do so.
Dr. K. T. Shah, a Texas doctor, said he was harassed at customs when he
tried to bring in medical equipment to donate in India.
Jagadish Shukla, a professor of climate dynamics at George Mason University
in Virginia, said he was starting a school in his village in eastern Uttar
Pradesh. "In my village, nothing has changed," he said, noting that it took
longer to get the village from New Delhi than it did to get to New Delhi from
the District of Columbia.
"Why didn't I do this 25 years ago?" he said of the school. He speculated
that much of the complaining about India at the gathering was motivated by
guilt at having left India behind.
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2003 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy
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