ABSTRACT

Diasporas are complex social formations shaped by political imaginaries and defined by the materialities of national borders and economies. Scholars across disciplines have grappled with the concept of diaspora and its paradigmatic constructions of forced dispersal, nostalgia and imagined homelands. 1 The term diaspora is evoked as an umbrella or catch-all term, an analytical category, or a heuristic. Alternatively, it is critiqued for collapsing and conflating distinct experiences of mobility. Recently, more scholarly attention has been paid to complicate the term in order to loosen the stable connection between diasporic communities and places of origin. With radical changes in the conditions of migration under neoliberal globalization, there is also a recognition of the transnational politics and cultural contradictions that frame diasporic lives. These experiences of border crossing and relocations raise questions that interrupt assumptions about nationality, citizenship and belonging. This Handbook is an effort to contextualize these questions with regard to the diverse experiences and particular histories that constitute the Indian diaspora.