MSOE 002 Solved Guess Paper 2026 for Diaspora and Transnational Communities, Master of Arts (Sociology) MSO and MAPFHS

Colonial background of Indian emigration

Question: Explain the colonial background of Indian emigration, and the impact of colonialism on it.

Meaning: Modern emigration from India was wholly a British creation. It began in 1834, when slavery was abolished in the British Empire and sugar plantations needed labour. Most Indians went only to British colonies; the exceptions were Reunion (French) and Surinam (Dutch). Kingsley Davis (1968) observed that the pressure to emigrate always produced far more emigrants than the openings available.

Factors that created the Indian exodus

1. Distress of the small peasantry: the Company fixed land tax at ninety per cent of rental in Bengal, and the Permanent Land Settlement (1793) made zamindars landlords forever. Debt forced peasants to sell land, turning them into landless labourers and then migrants.
2. Famines: frequent after 1860. Food production fell while foodgrain exports rose, and the government preferred railways over canals (Bhatia 1967).
3. Decline of handicrafts: Britain banned Indian goods in 1720, and British cotton exports to India rose from just over £100,000 (1813) to £5.2 million (1850). Artisans lost work.
4. Sluggish, enclavist industrialisation: modern industry stayed in Bombay City, Calcutta and the Bengal and Bihar coal belt (Charlesworth 1982). In 1931 only about 1.5 million of 353 million people worked in modern factories.
5. Other factors: heavy dependence on agriculture, seasonal unemployment, mass illiteracy and a caste-bound occupational structure.

Impact of colonialism on the pattern

1. Volume: between 1834 and 1937 about 30 million Indians left and 24 million returned, a net emigration of 6 million (Davis 1968).
2. Mostly labour: about 98 per cent of migrants were labourers, moving to ports inside the British Empire.
3. Three colonial patterns: indentured, kangani or maistry, and 'passage' emigration.
4. Subservient roles: Indians were welcome only in low jobs; when they competed with whites they were blocked, so labour immigration was encouraged and passage immigration resented.

Burma shows the link clearly: in 1838 there were only 19 Indians in Rangoon (Pearn 1946), and migration grew only after the British annexed the Irrawaddy Delta in 1852.

Conclusion: British colonialism left India with stagnant agriculture, dying handicrafts, famine and poverty, while creating huge labour demand in the colonies. Together, these two forces made colonial Indian emigration possible.

Indian diaspora formation in the USA, and its educational profile

Question: Describe the process of Indian diaspora formation in the USA. Discuss its educational profile.

Hindrance to a service diaspora

1. Early migrants: mostly illiterate labourers in Pacific coast lumber mills and docks, largely from Punjab; educated Indians were political refugees or students.
2. Literacy test (1917): introduced to keep 'Asian Indians' out as the 'least desirable' immigrants.
3. Quota system: the Act of 1921 and the national origins quota (1924) gave Indians no quota at all.
4. 1946 Amendment: ended almost 30 years of exclusion with an annual quota of 100.
5. Nehru's visit (October 1949): hastened the shift from service workers to knowledge workers.

Prelude to a knowledge diaspora

1. 1965 Amendments: ended the national origins quota and, fully in force from 1968, gave priority to trained professionals.
2. 1970s: the USA overtook the UK and Canada as the main destination; almost a hundred thousand engineers, doctors, scientists and teachers had entered by 1975 (Jensen 1988).
3. H1-B visas: created by the 1990 Amendments (effective 1992). In 1998, 42 per cent went to Indians, four out of five of them IT professionals.

Education profile

1. 1980 Census: 89 per cent of India-born immigrants aged 25 and above had finished high school and 66 per cent held a college degree, against 53 and 16 per cent for all immigrants.
2. Low non-schooling: only 6 per cent had under eight years of schooling, against 36 per cent of all immigrants.
3. Science and engineering (1999): 165,000 India-born residents held S&E degrees, 13 per cent of all foreign-born, and 30,000 held S&E doctorates, second only to the Chinese.
4. Indian institutions: many came from IITs, RECs, BHU, JNU, Delhi University, AIIMS and IIMs, then studied further in the USA.

The population of Indian ancestry grew from 0.36 million (1980) to 0.82 million (1990) and 1.7 million (2000).

Conclusion: US law first shut Indians out and then, after 1965, welcomed the skilled. Human capital became the backbone of the Indian diaspora there, and on education Indians stand at the top of American society.

Settlement societies and the civilisational theory of Indian diaspora

Question: What are 'settlement societies'? Explain their relationship with the civilisational theory of Indian diaspora.

Meaning: The idea begins with J.S. Furnivall's plural society (1948), whose segments 'mix but do not blend', and with plantation theorists who called plantation societies 'settlement institutions' (Thompson 1959). A settlement society is a polythetic category: not every case shows every feature of the type.

Characteristics of settlement societies

1. Short history: basically post-1492, marked by recent massive immigration.
2. Native populations: present in variable numbers.
3. Colonialism: a colonial or dependent status of some kind.
4. Economy and ethnicity linked: ethnic relations improve when the economy is good, and worsen when it is not.
5. Types: elementary island societies such as Mauritius, Fiji and Trinidad; complex 'New Societies' such as the USA, Canada, South Africa and Australia (Hartz 1964).

Civilisational theory of Indian diaspora

1. Starting point: the Indic civilisation, one of Louis Dumont's 'non-modern civilisations' (1975).
2. Great and little traditions: a civilisation lives through their interaction (Marriott 1955; Singer 1972).
3. Common will: India's patterns recur like a palimpsest (Lannoy 1971), and its long history allows a true blend rather than a mixture.

The relationship: a dialectic

1. Dialectical, not oppositional: civilisations show a settlement-society form in their history, and settlement societies move towards a civilisational design.
2. Feedback: settlement societies can re-energise civilisations and even reverse the centre-periphery paradigm of world-system theorists.
3. Examples: Indians in South Africa claim 'settler' status, while the UK is a civilisation holding a settlement society inside it.
4. Culture and political economy: civilisation studies stress culture, settlement studies stress political economy, and each needs the other.

Conclusion: Settlement societies are young, colonial and immigrant-based; civilisations like India are old and share a common will. The dialectic between the two gives a dynamic frame to study the Indian diaspora.

Indian diaspora in the Gulf compared with North America

Question: Compare the Indian diaspora in the Gulf region with the diaspora in North America.

Core contrast: Gulf migration is contract labour with no right to settle, while North American migration is permanent and professional.

Nature of Indian migration to the Gulf

1. Old links: Indian traders called baniyans lived in Iraq, Iran, Oman, Yemen and Saudi Arabia in the 17th and 18th centuries.
2. Oil boom: after the oil price rise of 1973 to 1974, demand grew for construction and other workers.
3. Numbers: about 50,000 in the early 1970s, over a million by 1985 and about 4 million now in the six GCC countries.
4. Origin and skills: Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka send about 70 per cent; roughly 70 per cent are skilled or unskilled workers (1998).
5. Remittances: in 1983 they paid for 20 per cent of India's merchandise imports, and NRI deposits helped avert the balance of payments crisis.

Indian diaspora in North America

1. Brain drain: post-war demand for skilled labour and relaxed laws drew professionals to Canada and the USA.
2. USA: large-scale migration after 1965, mostly scientists, engineers and doctors, driven more by the American pull than the Indian push.
3. Canada: early migrants were mostly Sikhs; after 1967 a points system brought skilled Indians, and the family class is almost half of all Indian migration.

Conclusion: The Gulf diaspora is temporary, labour-based and always circulating; the North American diaspora is permanent, professional and prosperous. Both matter to India, but in very different ways.

Evolution of Nehruvian policy towards the Indian diaspora

Question: Discuss the evolution of Nehruvian policy towards the Indian diaspora.

Core idea: Nehru asked Indians abroad to co-operate with the people of their host country, win a place through friendship and service, and claim no special position for themselves.

Before independence

1. AICC paper, 1927: as AICC secretary, Nehru wrote 'A Foreign Policy of India', the first Congress statement on Indians abroad.
2. Two wings in Congress: the conservative wing (C.F. Andrews, Srinivasa Sastri, Kunzru, Malaviya, Gokhale) wanted parity with white settlers; Nehru, on the left, wanted Indian and African co-operation.
3. Overseas department (1929): set up by Congress to contact local Congress bodies in Africa.

After independence

1. Interim government, 1946: took South Africa's discrimination to the United Nations and ended trade ties, losing 5 per cent of India's trade.
2. Constituent Assembly, 8 March 1948: if Indians abroad are not Indian citizens, India's interest is 'cultural, humanitarian and not political'.
3. 1950 and 1953: Indians must put the interest of indigenous people first; India would support nothing against Africans.
4. No dual citizenship: one cannot be loyal to two masters, though citizenship by registration was allowed for those with Indian-born parents or grandparents.

Contradictions and practice

1. Dual loyalty: during the China war, Nehru himself spoke of overseas Indians having 'dual loyalty'.
2. Limits: India could not stop the Burma Citizenship Act 1948 or the 1962 nationalisation of Indian property.
3. Africa: Indians in Kenya were advised to give up British passports and take local citizenship, and the Indian issue in South Africa merged with the anti-apartheid cause.

Conclusion: Nehru's policy asked overseas Indians to integrate with their host countries and seek no special rights. It kept India's interest cultural rather than political, and it held until liberalisation changed India's approach.