When the pravasis came home
By Shashi Tharoor
"The Hindu", Online edition of India's National Newspaper
January 30, 2005

`The dialogue between India and its diaspora has only just begun... So I was mildly surprised by the cynicism of the many desi journalists who thrust microphones into my face during the weekend and asked me if it wasn't all a waste of time.'

VIVEK BENDRE

Bonding -- NRI women at the Third "Pravasi Bharatiya Divas", in Mumbai.

INDIA is the only country that has an official acronym for its expatriates — NRIs, for "Non-Resident Indians". In my book India: From Midnight to the Millennium, I jokingly suggested that the real debate was whether NRI stood for "Not Really Indian" or "Never Relinquished India". The nearly 25 million people of Indian descent who live abroad fall, of course, into both categories. But the 1,600 delegates who flocked to Mumbai from 61 different countries for the third Pravasi Bharatiya Divas celebrations this month were firmly in the latter camp. They were in India to affirm their claim to it.

It was curiously appropriate that the event, organised by the newly-created Ministry for Overseas Indian Affairs in co-operation with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), took place in Mumbai this year rather than, as on the first two occasions, in New Delhi.

A shared heritage

For the Pravasi Bharatiya weekend fell on the 90th anniversary of the return to India of the most famous NRI of them all, Mahatma Gandhi, who alighted from his South African ship at Bombay's Apollo Bunder port on January 9, 1915. The nativism that has seen Bombay being renamed Mumbai has not diluted the city's dynamic cosmopolitanism. It still remains the gateway to India, a thriving, bustling, industrious, polyglot beehive of trade and exchange. If Mumbai seems sometimes to be choking on its own traffic, the city's aspirations, both literally and metaphorically, seem limitless. It was the right place to bring the world's largest gathering of NRIs together.

And they came in larger numbers than ever, their enthusiasm undampened by the grim news of the tsunami disaster just two weeks earlier. The Vice-Presidents of Suriname and Mauritius, the former Prime Ministers of Fiji and Trinidad and Tobago, Malaysian politicians and Gulf-based entrepreneurs, tycoons from Hong Kong and titans from the United States, all united by the simple fact of shared heritage — the undeniable reality that even exiles cannot escape when they look into the mirror. They were united, too, in the words of the typically thoughtful and inspiring inaugural address by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, by an "idea of Indianness". It is an idea that enshrines the diversity and pluralism both of our country and of its disapora. In a land and a city that is home to Indians of every conceivable caste and creed, the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas celebrations afforded to Indians — including former Indians — of every conceivable caste and creed the welcome assurance that they were indeed at home.

Four waves of emigration

In his speech, the Prime Minister traced what he characterised as four waves of Indian emigration: the first, in pre-colonial times, featured Indians leaving our shores as travellers, teachers and traders; the second involved the enforced migration of Indian labour as indentured servants of

the British Empire; the third, the tragic displacement of millions by the horrors of Partition; and the fourth, the contemporary phenomenon of skilled Indians seeking opportunity and challenge in our globalised world.

I would probably divide the fourth wave further into two distinct categories: one of highly educated Indians, often staying on after studies abroad in places like the U.S., and the other of more modestly-qualified but even harder-working migrants, from taxi drivers to shop assistants, who for the most part see their migration as temporary and who remit a larger proportion of their funds home to India than their higher-earning counterparts. But in today's world both sets of "fourth wave" migrants remain closely connected to the matrbhumi: the ease of communications and travel makes it possible for expatriates to be engaged with the country they left behind in a way that was simply not available to the plantation-worker in Mauritius or Guyana a century ago. To tap into this sense of allegiance and loyalty through an organised public gathering was an inspired idea of the previous Government, one which the present Government has built upon through its creation of a "one-stop shop" in the form of a dedicated Ministry.

Why the cynicism?

So I was mildly surprised by the cynicism of the many desi journalists who thrust microphones into my face during the weekend and asked me if it wasn't all a waste of time. "What does a conference like this actually achieve?" they wanted to know. "How is it useful?" This was a remarkably utilitarian approach to the occasion, and I suppose I could have responded by pointing to the many parallel seminars being run by State governments to attract NRI investment, or the session on disaster-management that had been added in the wake of the tsunami. But I preferred to make a larger point: that sometimes the real value of a conference lies in the conferring. Perhaps it is time we realised that instead of counting how many new millions were raised for tourism in Rajasthan or pledged for reconstruction in Port Blair, we should appreciate how much it means to allow NRIs from 61 different lands the chance to share their experiences, celebrate their commonalities, offer their ideas and swap visiting cards. Because when India allows its pravasis to feel at home, it is India itself that is strengthened.

Which is why I was concerned to hear rumours that the Government was contemplating reducing the frequency of the hitherto annual Pravasi Bharatiya gatherings to one every other year. I am not sure what lies behind this, nor whether the able Minister, Jagdish Tytler, and his impressive Secretary, Krishna Kumar, have road-tested the idea with a cross-section of the attendees. My own conversations across the board leave me in no doubt that this would be a mistake, since the occasion has clearly acquired a momentum that it would be a shame to disrupt. When a locomotive has been gathering steam, why apply the brakes? The dialogue between India and its diaspora has only just begun. Let us not interrupt it.