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Culture and Class in Indian Diaspora
Differing perspectives on culture and tradition have marked relations between homeland and diasporic Indians. Flaunting of their cultural superiority on the part of the homeland Indians has been marked by equally exclusivist and purist tendencies on the part of Indian immigrants to South Africa and in the Caribbean - a fallout as the author argues, of the rightist brand politics that has prevailed for long in the host nations.
In the sociology of south Asian diaspora there is a largely unattended issue or a series of issues, which pertains to the culture of diasporics vis-a-vis that of the home country and of non-south Asian ethnic groups in the host societies. At its most general level the framework for considering this matter would be the confluence of cultural persistence, i e, continuities of customs and practices brought by immigrants from the homeland and their socio-cultural adaptation to host countries. But the situation warrants a closer ethnographic probe since the matter of cultural stereotypes and attitudes involved here has structural consequences for the diaspora space. It may help to start with a few examples.
Little and Great Traditions
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