Wealth, Nostalgia and Success

When it comes to NRIs and PIO, the Indian media is obsessed with the rosy patriotism of the marketplace, says Subarno Chattarji

While the India Shining campaign projects a vision of a nation that is booming, mainstream Indian print media has over the years portrayed NRIs and PIO as essential elements of a resurgent nation. I look at some articles in the Times of India, which encapsulate the aspirations and ideals of the fabled Indian middle class. The primary focus of these articles is on the achievements of the diasporic ‘other’, which is then extrapolated onto the imaginative topography of a nation on the move.

In her piece ‘Indian woman breaks glass ceiling in West’ (Times, September 3, 2003) Rashmi Z. Ahmed profiles Shami Chakrabarti who was to take over as head of Liberty, one of Western Europe’s oldest civil liberties organisations. Chakrabarti’s elevation to the position of the ‘unofficial keeper of Britain’s conscience’ is an occasion for celebration but pride is combined with a certain condescension: “Chakrabarti’s rise means she joins yet another so-called “bleeding heart” ethnic Indian, Shaks Ghosh from Delhi, on the frontline of British liberal humanitarian endeavour”.

Chakrabarti’s commitment to human rights, asylum seekers, and immigrants is mentioned in the article but these are issues seldom dealt with in any serious manner. Rarely do articles over a period of a year beginning April 2003, deal with the issue of illegal migrants from India; the desperate bid by many to join the global community. Media coverage deals with such issues tangentially when celebrities such as Daler Mehendi and Mallika Sarabhai are embroiled in strange, unconvincing cases of immigration ‘fraud’. In the latter case, Sarabhai was obviously targeted for her outspokenness during and after the Gujarat riots. She fits nicely into the ‘bleeding heart’ category that the Times distances itself from. The paper is much more comfortable with corporate or political achievement, but it also wants to be politically correct and hence the inclusion of the Chakrabarti profile.

In US pat for Indian auto whiz (Times, October 24, 2003) Chidanand Rajghatta writes of the Kolkata-born Haren Gandhi “whose contributions towards emission control have returned the US to the forefront of automotive technology” and who was one of the recipients of the 2002 National Medal of Technology. Gandhi works for Ford Motor Company and contributed to the “design of emission systems for the local Ford Ikon model”. So here we have the local boy who made it good in the US and contributes something to his country as well.

It is the perfect trajectory for the NRI and along with a slew of articles on IIT-ians in the US creates the basis for a feel good factor within and outside the country. The ‘brain drain’ syndrome is still the basis for collective angst (Shobha John, 20 per cent IIT-ians still leave India… And we thought brain drain was over, Times, Sunday Special, August 3, 2003), but it is soon replaced by the comforting fact that there is a ‘reverse brain drain’ (John, The brains are coming back after the drain, Sunday Times, August 17, 2003; Anil Padmanabhan, Return Flight, India Today, August 11 2003). The return flight, we are told, is due to working conditions and the economy having improved in India, along with the realisation amongst immigrants of the realities of racism in post 9/11 America. Many of the returnees interviewed talk about roots and returning home.

It is interesting that these homes are made to approximate to the conception of home in the US. Thus shopping malls, multiplexes, apartment blocks named Beverley Park, Carlton, Hamilton are de rigueur for the Shining India within which the NRI will reacquaint himself with his roots. Unsurprisingly, none of the articles refer to the world outside these enclaves, the world where globalisation has little ameliorative effect.

The concentration is on the nostalgia of return whether in actuality or through television dramas such as Second Generation (Rashmee Z. Ahmed, Passage to India II: Children of diaspora return via tube, Times, September 13, 2003). The drama presents three of the lead characters returning to India. “Two of them — a Bengali Hindu-Muslim pairing — are beer-swilling, bhangra-rapping, British-born-and-bred … But, for the first time ever on British TV, the British-Indian second generation is shown to reject the bright lights of London for the alien-but-dimly-remembered chaos and camaraderie of Kolkata.” Director Jon Sen quoted in a pre-release interview declared that his TV show was a “benchmark production because it took the British Asian narrative on, even as it started from a position of Indian pride, wealth and success”.

Various kinds of nostalgia related to place (Kolkata), politics (the Hindu-Muslim pairing), and possibility (the seamless interweaving between the metropolitan centre and the dimly-remembered margin) coalesce with the “position of Indian pride, wealth and success”. Ultimately, it is the latter that matters the most both in terms of diasporic movement, cultural exchange (if one may define Second Generation in such terms) and the idea of a successful community abroad.

In Karisma of a “brown” Mela (Rashmee Z. Ahmed, Times, October 10, 2003) Karisma Kapoor’s jetting into London to inaugurate a three-day mela is precisely the type of “Indian pride, wealth and success” that is celebrated. “Asian-ness is not just fashion but big business, with the two million strong Asian community’s collective spending power now estimated at an impressive 10 billion pounds.” The mela is not just about curry and henna tattoos but about Ford and British Telecom spending huge sums to make their presence felt. It’s about a makeover in the image of British Asians who are “newly being categorised as a fast-growing, acquisitive, label conscious, status-seeking niche market”. “It’s a sign we’re integrating but not assimilating,” says Anjana Raheja who authored a report for the advertising industry in Britain on the untapped potential of the ‘brown pound’.