Abstract

This interdisciplinary collection of essays offers a window onto the overseas Indian and Chinese communities in Asia. Contributors discuss the interactive role of the cultural and religious ‘other’, the diasporic absorption of local beliefs and customs, and the practical business networks and operational mechanisms unique to these communities. Growing out of an international workshop organized by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and the Centre of Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong, this volume explores material, cultural and imaginative features of the immigrant communities and brings together these two important communities within a comparative framework.

Jayati Bhattacharya is a Lecturer in the South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore.

Coonoor Kripalani is Honorary Institute Fellow at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong.

“Groundbreaking! The essays in this extraordinary collection juxtapose the Chinese and Indian Diasporas – two of the largest in world history – in a range of unprecedented ways. Far beyond merely comparing, they also reveal how the migration processes interact and intertwine, overlap and intersect each other. As a source of insight, inspiration and information, this volume forces us to fundamentally rethink many important aspects of migration while showing exciting new possibilities in the field of diaspora studies.” —Elizabeth Sinn, author of “Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong”

“Arising from two of the largest migrations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Chinese and Indian immigrant communities are well known, little studied, and rarely compared—until now. This is a path-breaking book, which shows all the complexity and ambiguities of immigrant life in vivid comparative detail. I heartily recommend it.”—Gary G. Hamilton, Associate Director, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

“Groundbreaking! The essays in this extraordinary collection juxtapose the Chinese and Indian Diasporas – two of the largest in world history – in a range of unprecedented ways. Far beyond merely comparing, they also reveal how the migration processes interact and intertwine, overlap and intersect each other. As a source of insight, inspiration and information, this volume forces us to fundamentally rethink many important aspects of migration while showing exciting new possibilities in the field of diaspora studies.” —Elizabeth Sinn, author of “Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong”

With the Asian economic upsurge in the recent decades, diasporas have emerged as significant agencies of the cultural diplomacy of respective nation states. Two of the most significant diasporic communities, the Indians and the Chinese, have long histories of migration to different corners of the world with considerable visibilities in different geo-political demographies. They have created many different local sites of interaction between themselves and with the host communities, particularly in Southeast Asia. The emerging concepts of ‘knowledge economy’, ‘global capitalism’, new trends of entrepreneurship, and a gradual shift of the economic power to the East has brought about a revision of relationships between homeland, diasporas and the different host nation-states.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays offers a window onto the overseas Indian and Chinese communities in Asia. Contributors discuss the interactive role of the cultural and religious ‘other’, the diasporic absorption of local beliefs and customs, and the practical business networks and operational mechanisms unique to these communities.

Growing out of an international workshop organized by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and the Centre of Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong, this volume explores material, cultural and imaginative features of the immigrant communities and brings together these two important communities within a comparative framework, and offers an example for further cross-disciplinary comparative study of this type.

“Arising from two of the largest migrations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Chinese and Indian immigrant communities are well known, little studied, and rarely compared—until now. This is a path-breaking book, which shows all the complexity and ambiguities of immigrant life in vivid comparative detail. I heartily recommend it.”—Gary G. Hamilton, Associate Director, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington