NOTES Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 7, 2013 vol xlviII no 49 59 Conceptualising Indian Diaspora Diversities within a Common Identity Amba Pande This article attempts to provide a framework for understanding the Indian diaspora, which encompasses a diverse set of people living outside India. This diversity is not only a representation of the plurality of Indian society and heterogeneity in the phases and patterns of migration, but also emerges out of the host country variations. However, regardless of this diverse framework, the Indians in the diaspora derive a commonality from their Indian origin, thus making their identity a play between the divergences and the unifying Indian stamp. Amba Pande (ambapande@gmail.com) is at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. D iasporas – the transnational com- munities wedded to host lands and profoundly connected to homelands – have added a new dimension to the contemporary debates on economic and political systems, national cultures and international relations. Encouraged and abetted by globalisation, diasporas experience national belongingness towards both home and the host country simulta- neously and initiate heuristic ideas for research and a constant interest among the policymakers to explore avenues for engagement. This article is an attempt to provide a framework to understand the Indian diaspora and engage with it as a condition/category of “peoplehood” possessing a specific consciousness and identity. However, a major challenge is to find a paradigm or template for under- standing the Indian diaspora that sub- sumes such a diverse set of people and migration patterns that challenges the very application of the term Indian diaspora in the context of overseas Indians. The mosaic of Indian identities abroad presents a complex picture which makes it difficult for policymakers and researchers to approach the diaspora as a single entity. This article, therefore, tries to shed light on how “Indianness” con- tinues to exist in different forms among various groups of the Indians abroad and binds them together, irrespective of differences in regions, languages, religions, causes, consequences and period of mig- ration, and host country variations. Debating the Diaspora The term diaspora, owing to its growing usage, has proliferated and “dispersed” so much from its core meaning that Roger Brubaker (2005) has gone to the extent of calling it “diaspora”. It has become more or less a “generic” term, sharing meaning with words like “immigrant, expatriate, refugee, guest worker, exile community, overseas com- munity, ethnic community” (Tololian 1991: 3-7). The inclusion of every act of migra- tion or all kinds of ethnic minorities in the domain of diaspora can surely be contested. But, attempts to formulate a definitional framework or paradigm (Safran 1991; Cohen 1996) have also been equally problematic as every case appears to be markedly different. How- ever, the terminological or explanatory confusion has, to some extent, led to a loss of distinctiveness and disregard for the diaspora as an entity, which gets in the way of policymaking and research. Therefore, in this article, an attempt has been made to sketch a concept for the term diaspora and situate Indian diaspora within that concept. The core elements that can be treated as the starting point for the description of diaspora can be underlined as the following: (1) Cross-border Migration/Dispersion and Settlement: It implies a dispersion in which the territorial boundaries of the state are crossed, followed by settlement in the “new land”. This cross-border movement can be either voluntary or in- voluntary, but that leads to a permanent or, at least, long-term settlement in the host country or in a third country, if remigration takes place. In such a case, several categories like short-term migrants, all kinds of ethnic communities, and even segments of the remaining population of a partitioned country (for example, India and Pakistan) would fall outside the purview of diaspora. (2) Host Land Participation: Settlement in the new land signifies not only resi- dence, but participation in the economic and political processes of the host land. The immigrants create a niche for them- selves and affect the host nation’s social, economic and political domains. They also negotiate and compete with other communities through, what Stanley Tambiah (2006: 170) calls, “vertical net- works” to secure their existence in the host countries. As the idea goes, “the more successful and well-integrated they are