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Comparing Diasporas
Indian and Chinese Immigrant Communities: Comparative Perspectives edited by Jayati Bhattacharya and Coonoor Kripalani, London, New York: Anthem Press, 2015; pp xxi + 305, ₹595.
The book under review, Indian and Chinese Immigrant Communities: Comparative Perspectives, is a multidisciplinary, edited volume that sets out to study the two largest diasporas in the world: the overseas Chinese and the overseas Indians. While this volume is not the first comparative study of this kind (Wong 2004; Chand and Ghorbani 2011; Zhu 2007; Skop and Li 2010; Harris 2013), the number of contexts in which the volume studies the two diasporas, is impressive. The editors have done a commendable task of bringing together scholars from different fields of study, who have overlapping research interests in Indian or Chinese (or both) diasporas.
Through a comparative study, the volume asks a crucial question: how do we define who is a diaspora? The essays have ventured to go beyond the “given” ideas of nationality, identity and homeland by foregrounding their fluid and transient nature. The book, thus, envisions unpacking the layers of identity that remain compressed within the term “diaspora.” In doing so, it also aims to trace how “otherness” and “belonging” are constructed in everyday life and how diasporic individuals experience these.
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