For the beloved PIO

Earlier too, those who sought a mere geographical identity for India premised on the impenetrable Himalayas in the north and the oceans surrounding the peninsula were strong on hyperbole but weak on history. In fact, neither have the Himalayas been invincible nor the oceans uncrossable.

Through the centuries, waves upon waves of immigrants and marauders have passed into India through the mountains and the so-called martial races in the foothlls and the plains have, if not actually welcomed them, stood by, as the Greek chroniclers of Alexander wrote, "ploughing their fields as armies engaged in battle".

Nevertheless, economics triumphed over ritualistic geography. Gujaratis and others crossed the Arabian Sea towend their way to East Africa and indeed Vasco da Gama was guided to India by a Gujarati pilot. On the other side, from Gaya to Guyana and Faizabad to Fiji a stream of indenture spread the Indian diaspora. In due course, there developed the phenomenon of "non-distance nationalism", a term coined by Benedict Anderson, the author of the celebrated Imagined Communities, to describe cross-frontier patriotism which links Ludhiana to London and Calcutta to California. The point about "long-distance nationalism", of course, is that it is necessarily vicarious. This is an aspect that escapes Yashwant Sinha.

The finance minister does not take into account the fact that NRIs gave new meanings to nationalism. This recent entrant into sangh parivar has assured that all NRIs are primordialists like those non-resident admirers of the Bajrang Dal who spew low-brow venomous bigotry through high-tech electronic mail. However, globalisation has meant different things to different people.

To some it has meant thecreation of a global community while to others it has meant merely the creation of global markets. In a few odd cases, the two have overlapped and globalisation has meant the invention of new communities determined by the market. The response of the forces of Hindutva to the establishment of the "unipolar world" has been to seek to imagine a global Hindu identity which is contrived by the market for unique nationalism.

The imagination of the "new Hindutva" is premised on emergent transnational market practices and is dependent on trans-border technologies which are now extremely powerful in shaping the contours of popular culture. At the same time, it is also based on primordialist "us-them" dichotomies which breed communalism rather than communitarianism.

Significantly, it was during the "modernist" dialogue between the orientalist discourses of colonialism and nationalism that Hinduism and its political variant, Hindutva, also acquired a territorial locus. The equation of Hinduism with "Indo-Aryanism"was matched by the characterisation of the politico-geographical entity of India as the punyabhoomi, the sacred space of an invented religion. Nevertheless, in this case too. the boundaries of the sacred space remained quite fluid and even those who physically migrated were allowed, even encouraged, to practice "long distance religious nationalism". The most dramatic illustration of this is in the recent consecration by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of a Shiva image in the Caribbean as "Trinidadeshwar". This shifting of the “sacred space" raises questions about the insistence on Ayodhya as the sanctified birthplace of Ram. At the same time, even a recent convert to militant Hindutva will realise that if PIOs have discovered sacred spaces in their present abodes, the motherland holds no particular attraction as an investment destination.

An aspect of this new Hindutva is reflected in the attitudes of a segment of the Non-Resident Indians (NRIs). In particular, a large section of the well-off, even`yuppie’, NRIs have extended support to the VHP in a curious assertion of post-nationalist ethnic identity. While location is of little or no significance for them and, as such, they are convinced regarding the "end of geography" if not also of history, they are more and more drawn to primordialist ties of religion.

It is important in this context, of course, to note that there are many varieties of NRIs or "People of Indian Origin". In addition to the "new" migrants from India who constitute the abundantly visible NRIs in Europe and America, there are also the older migrants in Surinam, Mauritius, Fiji and South Africa for whom migration was not voluntary. Much of the "Indian" population of these countries is descended from people who were taken there as indentured labourers and their severance of organic linkages with the "motherland" was forced. The articulation of "Indianness" among such people has been through use of the idiom of political Hinduism.

At the same time, "back home" in India, a curiousreversal of ideological roles is also being manifested. Just as an imagined India, and even an India coloured in the shades of political Hinduism, provides cultural sustenance to those who have migrated from it, it is the migrants – in particular the NRIs – who become role models for many resident Indians. The cycle of globalisation and ethnicity is thus completed. And the wait for the elusive PIO continues.