The Diasporic Gaze: Transnational Simultaneity and Indian-American Politics across Borders

• In Event: South Asia and the Diaspora

Abstract

The Indian Diaspora maintains continuing dense and complex ties to their country of origin, like many other transnational migrants. While much existing research examines the topic of immigrant transnationalism from migrants’ positions in their receiving country, this paper departs from this approach and studies the relationship between India and the Indian diaspora by following Indian-Americans as they move across borders on their regular trips back to India. Drawing on extensive ethnographic, interview, and archival data sources in both the US and India collected from 2022-2025, I develop the concept of the diasporic gaze to describe how Indian-American Hindus make sense of and reconcile the rapidly developing urban India they experience in the present with the India they remember leaving behind. I proceed to show how the diasporic gaze figures into their politics, as they shift positions from being ethnoracial minorities in the US to part of the dominant majority in India. By drawing on discourses of development circulating in India (what scholars refer to as the India Story) and their own experiences of the rapidly changing urban environment in India, they are able to defray any cognitive dissonance that accompanies supporting minority-inclusive politics in one context and majoritarian politics in another.

Author

• Nisarg Mehta, University of Chicago