Indian Transmigrants: Malaysian and Comparative Essays

The spectrum of globalization in our times necessitates comparisons over still larger territories; therefore, while focusing on particular Indian transmigrants, East and West, Jain’s perspective encompasses the entire field of the modern Indian diaspora.

As a pioneering and singularly wide-ranging narrative of the diaspora, based primarily on the author’s fieldwork, this book unravels facets of socio-cultural pluralism, hybridization, ethnic movements, politico-economic mobility and global modernity over a vast territory. The rich ethnographic detail is interleaved throughout with acute analysis and interpretation. The methodology adopted here invites comparisons over a still wider terrain and is therefore of immense relevance to all students of globalization, international migration, socio-cultural transformation and political economy in the new millennium, with special reference to the Asia-Pacific region.

Contents

1 Introduction
2 Tamilian Labour and Malayan Plantations, 1840–1938
3 Malaysian Multiculturalism and Indian Diaspora
4 Tamils on the Plantation Frontier in Malaysia Revisited, 1998-99
5 Overseas Indians in Malaysia and the Caribbean
6 Culture, Class and Mobility among Transmigrants: A Comparative Exercise
7 Electronic Media in Contemporary India and its Diaspora
8 Summary and Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Index

Ravindra K. Jain was educated at Lucknow University and the Australian National University, Canberra, and taught social anthropology and sociology at Oxford (1966-74) and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (1975-2002) besides holding research and teaching positions in many other parts of the world.

His major publications include: South Indians on the Plantation Frontier in Malaya, 1970; (Editor);  Text and Context: The Social Anthropology of Tradition, 1977; Indian Communities Abroad: Themes and Literature, 1993; The Universe as Audience: Metaphor and Community among the Jains of North India, 1999; Between History and Legend: Status and Power in Bundelkhand, 2002.