A Subaltern History of the Indian Diaspora in Singapore

A Subaltern History of the Indian Diaspora in Singapore PDF Author: John Solomon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317353811
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Untouchable migrants made up a substantial proportion of Indian labour migration into Singapore in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During this period, they were subject to forms of caste prejudice and discrimination that powerfully reinforced their identities as untouchables overseas. Today, however, untouchability has disappeared from the public sphere and has been replaced by other notions of identity, leaving unanswered questions as to how and when this occurred. The untouchable migrant is also largely absent from popular narratives of the past. This book takes the "disappearance" as a starting point to examine a history of untouchable migration amongst Indians who arrived in Singapore from its modern founding as a British colony in the early nineteenth century through to its independence in 1965. Using oral history records, archival sources, colonial ethnography, newspapers and interviews, this book examines the lives of untouchable migrants through their everyday experience in an overseas multi-ethnic environment. It examines how these migrants who in many ways occupied the bottom rungs of their communities and colonial society, framed transnational issues of identity and social justice in relation to their experiences within the broader Indian diaspora in Singapore. The book trances the manner in which untouchable identities evolved and then receded in response to the dramatic social changes brought about by colonialism, war and post-colonial nationhood. By focusing on a subaltern group from the past, this study provides an alternative history of Indian migration to Singapore and a different perspective on the cultural conversations that have taken place between India and Singapore for much of the island's modern history.

A Subaltern History of the Indian Diaspora in Singapore

A Subaltern History of the Indian Diaspora in Singapore PDF Author: John Solomon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317353811
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Get Book Here

Book Description
Untouchable migrants made up a substantial proportion of Indian labour migration into Singapore in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During this period, they were subject to forms of caste prejudice and discrimination that powerfully reinforced their identities as untouchables overseas. Today, however, untouchability has disappeared from the public sphere and has been replaced by other notions of identity, leaving unanswered questions as to how and when this occurred. The untouchable migrant is also largely absent from popular narratives of the past. This book takes the "disappearance" as a starting point to examine a history of untouchable migration amongst Indians who arrived in Singapore from its modern founding as a British colony in the early nineteenth century through to its independence in 1965. Using oral history records, archival sources, colonial ethnography, newspapers and interviews, this book examines the lives of untouchable migrants through their everyday experience in an overseas multi-ethnic environment. It examines how these migrants who in many ways occupied the bottom rungs of their communities and colonial society, framed transnational issues of identity and social justice in relation to their experiences within the broader Indian diaspora in Singapore. The book trances the manner in which untouchable identities evolved and then receded in response to the dramatic social changes brought about by colonialism, war and post-colonial nationhood. By focusing on a subaltern group from the past, this study provides an alternative history of Indian migration to Singapore and a different perspective on the cultural conversations that have taken place between India and Singapore for much of the island's modern history.

50 Years Of Indian Community In Singapore

50 Years Of Indian Community In Singapore PDF Author: Gopinath Pillai
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9813140607
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
From Tamils to Malayalees, from Bengalis to Punjabis, the diverse Indian community in Singapore has played a large part in building the country. To understand the Indian community, one must know certain basic facts about them.First is their love for culture which transcends religious and linguistic differences. Some of the best classical Hindustani singers are Muslims. The best Malayalam singer of Hindu religious songs is a Christian.Second is their love of debates. Argument is part of Indian tradition because of the belief that truth can only be arrived at vigorous debate.The third characteristic is the community's respect for education. Indians, across castes and religions have always venerated knowledge and learning as being a value in itself.The fourth characteristic of the Indians is their devoutness: they take their religious duties seriously and perform them regularly.This celebratory volume highlights the progress, contributions and challenges of the community for the past 50 years since Singapore's independence in 1965.

Indians in Singapore, 1819-1945

Indians in Singapore, 1819-1945 PDF Author: Rajesh Rai
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198099291
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This title is a comprehensive study of the Indian diaspora in colonial Singapore. The book provides a meticulous historical account of the formation of the diaspora in the colonial port-city, and its socio-political, religious and cultural development from the advent of British colonial rule to the end of the Japanese occupation.

New Perspectives on the Indian Diaspora

New Perspectives on the Indian Diaspora PDF Author: Ruben Gowricharn
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000412571
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
This book critically examines new perspectives on the transformations in the Indian diaspora. It studies the changing perspectives on the historical background of the diaspora and analyses fresh and emerging views in response to new configurations in diaspora relations. The volume highlights the transformation of the old Indian diaspora into a new ensemble in which economic, ideological and cultural forces predominate and interact closely. It looks at various themes including Indian indentured emigration to sugar colonies, comparisons between labour migration from India and China, the Girmitiya diaspora, the Indian diaspora in Africa and the rise of racial nationalism, India’s soft power in the Gulf region, and the repurposing of the ‘Hindutva’ idea of India for Western societies as undertaken by diaspora communities. Lucid and topical, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of diaspora studies, migration studies, political studies, international relations, globalisation, political sociology, sociology and South Asia studies.

The Subaltern Indian Woman

The Subaltern Indian Woman PDF Author: Prem Misir
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811051666
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
This book focuses on subjugated indentured Indian women, who are constantly faced with race, gender, caste, and class oppression and inequality on overseas European-owned plantations, but who are also armed with latent links to the women’s abolition movements in the homeland. Also examining their post-indenture life, it employs a paradigm of male-dominated Indian women in India at the margins of an enduringly patriarchal society, a persisting backdrop to the huge 19th century post-slavery movement of the agricultural indentured workforce drawn largely from India. This book depicts the antithetical and contradictory explanations for the indentured Indian women’s cries, degradation and dehumanization and how the politics of change and control impacted their social organization and its legacy. The book owes its origins to the 2017 centennial commemorative event celebrating 100 years of the abolition of the indenture system of Indian labor that victimized and dehumanized Indians from 1834 through 1917.

History at the Limit of World-History

History at the Limit of World-History PDF Author: Ranajit Guha
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231505094
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
The past is not just, as has been famously said, another country with foreign customs: it is a contested and colonized terrain. Indigenous histories have been expropriated, eclipsed, sometimes even wholly eradicated, in the service of imperialist aims buttressed by a distinctly Western philosophy of history. Ranajit Guha, perhaps the most influential figure in postcolonial and subaltern studies at work today, offers a critique of such historiography by taking issue with the Hegelian concept of World-history. That concept, he contends, reduces the course of human history to the amoral record of states and empires, great men and clashing civilizations. It renders invisible the quotidian experience of ordinary people and casts off all that came before it into the nether-existence known as "Prehistory." On the Indian subcontinent, Guha believes, this Western way of looking at the past was so successfully insinuated by British colonization that few today can see clearly its ongoing and pernicious influence. He argues that to break out of this habit of mind and go beyond the Eurocentric and statist limit of World-history historians should learn from literature to make their narratives doubly inclusive: to extend them in scope not only to make room for the pasts of the so-called peoples without history but to address the historicality of everyday life as well. Only then, as Guha demonstrates through an examination of Rabindranath Tagore's critique of historiography, can we recapture a more fully human past of "experience and wonder."

Fleeting Agencies

Fleeting Agencies PDF Author: Arunima Datta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108837387
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Critically examines the agency and history of long-silenced coolie women and their role in colonial economy and transnational movements.

Temple Tracks

Temple Tracks PDF Author: Vineeta Sinha
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1805390163
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
The notions of labour, mobility and piety have a complex and intertwined relationship. Using ethnographic methods and a historical perspective, Temple Tracks critically outlines the interlink of railway construction in colonial and post-colonial Asia, as well as the anthropology of infrastructure and transnational mobilities with religion. In Malaysia and Singapore, evidence of religion-making and railway-building from a colonial past is visible in multiple modes and media as memories, recollections and 'traces'.

Cultural Dimensions of India’s Look-Act East Policy

Cultural Dimensions of India’s Look-Act East Policy PDF Author: Sarita Dash
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811935297
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description


History, Historians and the Immigration Debate

History, Historians and the Immigration Debate PDF Author: Eureka Henrich
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319971239
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
This book is a response to the binary thinking and misuse of history that characterize contemporary immigration debates. Subverting the traditional injunction directed at migrants to ‘go back to where they came from’, it highlights the importance of the past to contemporary discussions around migration. It argues that historians have a significant contribution to make in this respect and shows how this can be done with chapters from scholars in, Asia, Europe, Australasia and North America. Through their work on global, transnational and national histories of migration, an alternative view emerges – one that complicates our understanding of 21st-century migration and reasserts movement as a central dimension of the human condition. History, Historians and the Immigration Debate makes the case for historians to assert themselves more confidently as expert commentators, offering a reflection on how we write migration history today and the forms it might take in the future.