Paper short abstract:

The paper argues that caste is strengthened by globalisation, with increasing stress on ethnicity. It is based on material from three studies: Patidar immigrants to London; a regional study of Saurashtra, Gujarat; and a study of Konkani Brahmin merchants in Karnataka.

Paper long abstract:

Amitav Ghosh, 'In an Antique Land', reminds us of the life-world of merchants that, in the high middle ages, stretched across the Indian Ocean to link Egypt and the coast of Malabar. He also shows how, in his own Egyptian village, he found himself in a contemporary life-world where India was a very distant and foreign land. Clearly, 'global' links are not new to history, nor does commonality of place indicate a congruence of life-worlds, beyond a minimum of functional adjustments. The peasants of Ghosh's Egyptian village were not necessarily part of the transoceanic links of cairo's Jewish merchants. Still, one point Ghosh makes stands out clearly: time may act to separate as well as to integrate populations.

The main thesis of the present paper is that communities - and in india this tends to mean castes - are the units that become globalized in today's world: the increasing stress on 'ethnicity' and other 'communitarian' identities is an integral part of today's globalization process.

My argument will be based on material from three different field studies: Patidar immigants to London around 1970; a regional study of Saurashtra, Gujarat in the seventies and eighties; and my present study of Konkani-speaking merchants near Mangalore, Karnataka. The Patidars were then in the process of becoming the globalized caste they now are; the inhabitants of different castes in Saurashtra tended to bound their life-worlds in very different ways both in terms of social and geographical space; and the Gauda Saraswat Brahmins of Karnataka belong, today, to another globalized community whose last international meeting was held in San Francisco, California.

Whether or not the 'village community' was ever a valid point of reference for fieldwork in India is an open question; certainly, the material I present here suggests that the points of reference, for a large part of the inhabitants of Indian villages or small towns, is often elsewhere. In other words, the Indian life-world is, to an important extent, an emigrant life-world. I shall explore more closely the 'mythical' dimension of the place of origin in relation to the Gauda Saraswat Brahmins, and its relation to the construction of 'tradition', lending content to community identity, and the increasing reification and abstractness of this content that comes with migration: as one informant put it: 'the emigrants are the most traditional - but they do not know the tradition'. f