1.5.4. Ethnic Ties in the Old Diaspora Countries

The removal of Mahendra P. Chaudhary in Fiji in the coup of 2000, and the ensuing ethnic strife are symbolic of the issues of domestic politics in the Old Diaspora countries. Similarly the issue of rights of the people Indian origin in Malaysia has been a recurrent domestic issue in that country. In November 2007, the Hindu Rights Action Force, a coalition of NGOs, gathered more than 50,000 minority Indians in the streets of Kuala Lumpur to announce a symbolic lawsuit against the British government, the former colonial ruler, for bringing them to the region as indentured labourers.

Incidents of ethnic tensions exist all across our diaspora; for instance, in Old Diaspora countries such as, Malaysia, where despite some political representation, Indians faces discrimination exacerbated by religious tensions between the Malays (Bhumiputras) and the Indians.

Fiji, where ethnic Indians comprise over 40% of the population, anti-Indian resentment resulted in an ethnic Fijian coup d’état in 2000, which removed from office the democratically-elected Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry. Trinidad, where the Speaker of the House, Occah Seapual, an Indian woman, was unseated by the People’s National Movement (PNM), the black party which had held power for most of the recent history of Trinidad. The PNM did it by promulgating a state of emergency in the dead of night, placed Seapual under house arrest, and eventually removed her as Speaker of the House.

This discrimination persists not just in countries like Malaysia, Fiji and Trinidad, but also in the New Diaspora countries like the UK and Germany, where skinhead Brits and Germans have violently clashed with people from South Asia. In Australia, attacks on Indian students have occurred at an alarming rate. Even in the US, a country where Indians have made immense strides in all fields, Indians are not immune from hate crimes, such as those committed by the Dot-buster gangs of New Jersey or the massacre of worshipers at the Sikh Gurdwara in Wisconsin.

Success of the Indian community as entrepreneurs, educators, innovators and doctors has also attracted certain threat perception. For instance, the portrayal of Indian’s having achieved their success at the cost of the local population. Thus, such threats need to be taken into consideration for making any Diaspora policy.

Indian migrants have lived in conditions of appalling poverty in many places around the world, where they were first taken as indentured labor many years ago. Still, a number of remarkable transformations have taken place over the past generations. Through thrift, dogged perseverance, hard work, and most importantly by a withdrawal into their own culture, these Indians successfully labored to give their children and grand-children better economic futures. In time, these descendants came to capture the trade, commerce and business leadership of their new homelands.

This was equally true in South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda as it was in Trinidad, Mauritius, Suriname and Burma, in spite of the resentment and discrimination of the local populace and political establishments.