Overseas Indian communities are not only scattered in diverse geographical areas, they are equally diverse in terms of their socio-economic and political status, It is perhaps as much due to this reason as paradigmatic differences in social sciences that fragmentary, diverse and contradictory conceptual frameworks have been presented regarding their race relations situations. Three such theoretical orientations, viz, theories of pluralism, middleman minority theory and the work of Rex, are briefly reviewed here. Pointing out their various shortcomings an attempt is made in this paper to construct a political economy and class-based conceptual framework which, in the author's view, more systematically explains the race relations situations of overseas Indians in numerous colonial/post-colonial societies.
