Articulating an Indian diaspora in South Africa: The Consulate General of India, diaspora associations and practices of collaboration

Abstract

a b s t r a c tEngagements between sending states and their diasporas have come under increasing critical scrutiny. Whilst political geographers have driven critical analysis of national level policies, debates have largely overlooked the broader range of actors, transactions and practices involved in implementing national policies in a geohistorically diverse array of diasporic contexts and settings. Over the last decade, the Indian government has invested significant resources in overseas diplomatic missions, consulates and high commissions to administer its diaspora outreach strategies. This paper examines the role of the Consulate General of India (CGI) in Durban, South Africa, focusing in particular on the networks of agents, associations, groups and political actors involved in collaborating with the CGI Durban in diaspora outreach practices. This paper draws on two periods of fieldwork in Durban between 2004 and 2005 and was supplemented by ongoing visual and textual analysis of news articles, promotional material, reports and websites. Using the concept of articulation, the paper highlights the discursive and performative practices involved in bringing together the agendas of the GOI with those of South African Indian diaspora associations through the outreach practices of the CGI in Durban. It argues that articulatory practices are essential to resolving some of the subjective and embodied dilemmas and contestations of belonging inherent in South African Indians' participation in diaspora outreach initiatives. Investigating how articulation contributes to drawing diverse and even competing agendas together makes room for further understanding the ways in which diaspora outreach practices can travel across a wide network, and the diverse agencies that can become catalysed in the process.

Diaspora strategies: Actors, members, and spaces

“…Yet, considering recent developments in the field, including an incipient “comparative turn” (Delano & Gamlen, ), it seems that the time is ripe to confront a broader set of questions concerning the types and motivations of strategies. Three are worth mentioned here in brief; first, although few would deny that culture, in its broadest sense, is an important determinant in the (un)making of strategies, save a few notable exceptions (Dickinson, ), its impact is yet to be seriously assessed. What is considered a legitimate strategy, which groups are entitled to partake in its implementation and who could justifiably enjoy its benefits, are not just political questions but are derived from, and are fundamentally implicated in the cultural meanings carried by specific social subjects in specific times and spaces.…”

The political geographies of diaspora strategies: Rethinking the ‘sending state’

“…Omelaniuk ). However, rather than focus only on the internal relations within sites, an assemblage approach examines the relations and trajectories between sites (Featherstone, : 140) which can also encompass the sorts of more mundane locations arguably neglected in mainstream political geography scholarship (Jeffrey ) as well as that of the diaspora strategies literature (Dickinson ). Such sites may include everyday spaces like gardens or markets (Rios and Watkins, ) or pastoral landscapes of socio‐natures (Fryer and Lehtinen, ), where assemblages of codes, regulations and ecologies shape peoples’ translocal spatial practices.…”

“…Global political and economic factors are normatively understood as giving rise to instabilities such as the tension between deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation (Gamlen ), but these factors only partially account for the ways that such spatial forms persist, or are disrupted over time. There is a tendency to marginalise the socio‐cultural contexts (Ho ) and affective forces (Dickinson ) both passively and actively involved in shaping how states formulate diasporic engagements, and that have subsequent outcomes both for individual diasporic subjectivities and stratified ideas of common citizenship.…”

Alter nation 24,1 (2017) 50 - 75 50 Electronic ISSN: 2519 - 5476 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.29086/2519 - 5476/2017/v24n1a4 Indian Diaspora Policy and the ‘International Triad’ – O f Voices and Visions beyond Pragmatism

“…The extent to which Indians should consider themselves part of an Indian Diaspora and linked symbolically and materially to India as a diasporic homeland became a highly uptight subject of debate (Dickinson 2015). Fatima Meer, in a speech at the 2003 Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, contested the idea that Indians in South Africa should feel part of a larger Indian Diaspora: '[Diaspora] is a word I abhor … We, Indian South Africans, have had to struggle hard to claim our South African-ness and that is something that we jealously guard.…”