| This dissertation examines Indian immigrant cultures in the United States and Britain following independence in 1947. Through the themes of settlement and relationship to homeland, it considers the various ways that Indians have constructed individual and group identities in a range of cultural forms. It argues that above all, transnational affiliations have guided the cultural work of Indians abroad in ways that militate against traditional models for immigration and assimilation.;By comparing immigrant cultures in the United States and Britain, the dissertation yields a number of interpretive conclusions about the nature of class and race formation in national and international contexts. With the experiences of colonial and postcolonial labor arrangements, Indians in Britain have constituted the "racial Other" in ways that they have not in the United States. Largely middle-class Indian Americans have been more likely to follow the model of de-racialized and hyphenated white immigrant ethnicity. In each case, however, the rise of the nation-state of India has had some power to influence how immigrants have seen themselves in their country of residence as well as in the world.;Chapters of the dissertation consider occasions of cultural formation of Indians abroad and describe the myriad ways that Indians experienced nationality, ethnic and racial formation and class identity. These chapters explore the global history of migration, two "Little Indias," print culture, autobiographical and fictional literature, and cultural festivals. Each chapter, by focusing to some extent on Indian cultural work in New York and London, also illuminates the new role of "urban ethnicity" in global formations.;The transnationalism that this dissertation argues is basic to Indian ethnicity emerges from the postwar rise of India and from old and new forms of economic, political and cultural globalization. In the ways that Indians retain connections to multiple states, in this case India, Britain and the United States, they mirror various flows of ideas, goods and capital. They also invite comparison with other third-world migrants, from Latin America, the Caribbean and other parts of Asia. |
