Paper short abstract:

This paper searches for ‘Indianness’ in the complex socio-cultural milieu of over twenty five million overseas Indians, highly diversified and dispersed globally in more than a hundred countries.

Paper long abstract:

This paper searches for 'Indianness' in the complex socio-cultural millieu of over twenty five million Indians, scattered in more than a hundred countries world over. People of Indian Origin outside India are no less diversified into innumerable castes and subcastes, languages and dialects, regions and localities, and religions, sects and subsects. Any definition of 'Indianness' needs to underline attributes that encompass all diversities that are present among the Indians in India and also elsewhere beyond the nation-state. The paper also explores the process through which 'Indianness' is pursued and perceived among the Indian diaspora.

Historically, India is colonial creation in the sense that the map of India was drawn by the British during her rule and redrawn significantly at the stroke of midnight on August 14th in 1947, while leaving the subcontinent. At that very moment, a section of the population became 'Pakistanis' and later some of them 'Bangladeshis'. Implied here is that 'Indianness' is a social/ psychological product of colonialism as much as post-colonialism, articulated through the political notion of a 'nation', that bound the population despite the diversities.

The post-colonial India and 'Indianness' excludes people and places falling within the boundaries of Pakistan despite the similarities in cultural and racial attributes. The concept of 'India' is essentially a political and territorial construct born out of the desire for a common Constitution, Parliament, governance and, above all, unity transcending all the diversities.