4 Returning, remitting, reshaping Non-Resident Indians and the transformation of society and space in Punjab, India 1 Margaret Walton-Roberts Introduction: transnational spaces Since Glick-Schiller et al. (1992) introduced their analytical framework for transnational understandings of immigrant communities, studies of trans- national spaces or transnational social fields have produced rich illustrations of the ways in which space and social relations are being shaped by migrant networks that operate across the boundaries of multiple nation states. Much of this work has been driven by investigations focusing on the US and Central and South America (Goldring 1998; Kearney 1995; Mountz and Wright 1996; Rouse 1991). In this chapter, I turn my attention away from Latin America and the US to India, Canada and Britain – three nations joined through shared, but unequal, colonial experiences and linked in the present through a post-colonial transnational space built primarily around Indian immigration. Within India, I focus on the Doaba region of Punjab, northwest India (see Figure 4.1), the site from which millions of Indian immigrants have dispersed to numerous places of settlement and resettle- ment to form extensive global networks. Researchers such as Ballard (1990), Helweg (1984), Johnston (1984), La Brack (1989) and, more recently, Tatla (1999), have focused on Punjab specifically through diasporic migrant links, but the density and continued development of Indian transnationalism merits further attention. In this chapter I will review these distinctly transnational connections through considering Canadian NRI (Non-Resident Indian) fundraising for community development projects in Punjab. Indians overseas The number of Indians overseas is estimated by the magazine India Today at around 15 million with approximately 3 million each in Europe and North America. 2 Within India the regional sources of migration have 4024 TRANS SPACES-A/rev/jr 4/3/04 10:27 am Page 78