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India’s diaspora is bigger and more influential than any in history
- archo 3y agohttps://archive.is/CnjZm https://archive.is/CnjZm
- FreshStart 3y agoNumbers and education push are what alloweth a cultural take over of a global industry.
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- dartharva 3y agoFeels like the other way round in India's case. Compared to the degrees of change India's own culture has gone through because of foreign influences, Indian immigrants' cultural impact on the West is nearly non-existent.
- jmopp 3y agoI don't know, Indian religious traditions made their way to the West in the 60s, and today things like yoga are pretty much mainstream. There is also the effect that Indian culture had on British culture in the 19th century: shampoo was brought to the West by an Indian immigrant, not to mention curry, tea, and pyjamas - among others. The effect that Indian culture has had on the West is greater, in my opinion, than the effect Chinese culture has had - though not as strong as that of the African diaspora cultures.
- BelleOfTheBall 3y agoI'd say it's more just numbers, it's about the culture's status in the recipient country. While stuff like Indian food or Chinese food is super-normalized, you don't really see either culture dominating the US. Education does help, because it makes them seem "closer" to us, but a lot of the time a big culture will just end up absorbing all others that connect to it.
- sramam 3y ago> While stuff like Indian food or Chinese food is super-normalized, you don't really see either culture dominating the US. Let's not forget "Namaste". The total number of Indians in the US is ~3M [0]. Given the relatively miniscule number of Indians (or Chinese) in the US, I'd actually say both have had an outsized impact on the host country. "Dominating" is a different notion. I cannot imagine a peaceful path to that end. [0] https://www.immigrationresearch.org/indian-immigrants-in-the-united-states https://www.immigrationresearch.org/indian-immigrants-in-the...
- veave 3y ago[flagged]
- ben_w 3y agoDoes that matter? The British empire was mostly run by upper-class British toffs, and still extraordinarily culturally influential.
- veave 3y agoBecause India is composed of many completely different races, languages, and thus cultures - you can't say India is "culturally influential" because there's no such thing as "Indian culture".
- xNeil 3y agoThey do share a common religion though - I think that might be the source for what we call "Indian culture"? Like Islamic culture is a thing, even though Muslims are all over the world and vary widely. In much the same way, I think "Indian culture" (Hindu culture) is recognisable, even if people speak different languages and belong to different races.
- ben_w 3y agoSwnio’n union fel y DU — es i i Brifysgol Cymru yn Aberystwyth. Not much of that (nor Scots Gaelic, nor Irish) in the Empire. And if local culture like Morris dancing, Caber tossing, and cheese rolling made it off the island, I never heard about it; conversely, the things which rich people in the UK did enjoy (Cricket, Shakespeare, Christianity) they did export.
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- gloryjulio 3y agoIn an alternative history, a non ccp China would be close to the US just like India and their dispora would be competitive with India's. But due to the ccp baggage, the Chinese influence is much weaker.
- tjpnz 3y agoThe (cry) wolf warrior shtick certainly isn't doing them any favours on the world stage.
- pydry 3y agoTheir industrial might certainly is though. Africa doesn't really care about interhegemonic competition and its associated grandstanding, they care about who builds their airports, roads, dams and railways.
- brmgb 3y agoI think the parent comment was strictly limited to the USA which China views as an adversary and not a partner. Anyone who has travelled a bit in Africa, South East Asia or the Balkans in the past decade could tell that the influence of China is far larger than that of India and does rival the US in more and more places. The Chinese diplomacy is very very good and hard working. Their diplomats are constantly travelling and that includes both major and small countries.
- anticodon 3y ago> But due to the ccp baggage, the Chinese influence is much weaker. Due to the "cpp baggage" China is big, influential and has much higher domestic level of life than India. Why do you think so many Indians are leaving the country? Have you ever been to India?
- QuesnayJr 3y agoThis is despite the CCP baggage. Look at Singapore and Taiwan. If it wasn't for the CCP, China would be as rich as Japan and South Korea.
- ETHisso2017 3y agoIt's interesting how the Chinese diaspora was able to drive a large amount of China's economic growth, but the same is not true for the Indian diaspora.
- accurrent 3y agoI'd argue that theres a lot of factors at play. Personally, my parents belong to said diaspora and I spent a long time in China. Ive asked myself the same question. First of all India started out a lot poorer than China post independence. The work needed to bring india up to speed is a lot more. The second issue is one of ethnic identity. China has been working on a predomonantly han based identity for 2 millenia. Indians dont quite have that. Each Indian ethnicity has their own set of values. Also a lot of educated Indians are more familiar with English than there own mother tongues making themselves feel more at home overseas than back home. Then there is the problem of India's financial policy - transacting money is a pain in the bottom for people with money overseas. In recent years things are changing. Younger indians do have a stronger sense of national identity and thanks to technology payments are somewhat easier. The indian government however still does not recognize or know how to exploit this diaspora.
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- yorwba 3y agoI don't think a common national identity is a big factor. From what I've read about economic development during China's reform-and-opening-up period, private investment from overseas usually piggy-backed on existing trust networks between family and friends. E.g. a Taiwanese investor would support his second cousin's business in Xiamen right across the strait, not some random stranger whose trustworthiness is completely unknown. So the Indian diaspora split into dozens of smaller groups could provide the same level of support as a hypothetical unified diaspora, each group contributing to their ancestral region's development, just like the Chinese diaspora.
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- gumballindie 3y agoEurope has a long history with the Indian diaspora. Particularly in East Europe, where to Romany, a people of Indian origin, have lived for hundreds of years. The two regions have long historical ties that I think should continue to be strengthened. Shame that Europe fails to acknowledge the history of slavery it made them endure and lacks the will to correct it.
- xNeil 3y agoWhile your point is quite interesting (I didn't know Romanis originated from India!), they did emigrate around 1000 CE, or 1000 years ago. I'm not sure whether you can even call them of Indian origin anymore?
- emptyfile 3y ago[dead]
- thevania 3y ago[flagged]
- quonn 3y agoFirst of all, Europe (which is in many respects not a single entity) has extensively acknowledged injustices done to Roma. Second, no, there are not relevant historical ties there anymore. Otherwise you could argue that Italy has ties to Egypt due to the Romans or Greece has ties to India due to Alexander. Perhaps India should acknowledge it‘s own history before lecturing Europe, which is a history of surpressing the scheduled castes - in many ways comparable to the Roma.
- 4gotunameagain 3y agowhat more could be done to correct it? gypsie communities already receive great support without contributing anything. gypsie communities are incredibly narrow minded, conservative and sexist, I find it perplexing that typical left wing people tend to support them. I guess they don't really know what's up because they've never met any. gypsies actively shun their own that go to school. Not university or college. School. they buy their wives from their parents. they expect everything from the state/host society, and give nothing back.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoI spent a year traveling around India early in the new millennium and of course being shocked by the overpopulation. But when I mentioned that overpopulation in conversations with locals as a bad thing, I was surprised to occasionally hear claims that no, that overpopulation would allow India to export more people and thus have a bigger impact on the world stage. Moreover, advocacy for population control was said to actually be a Pakistani and/or Chinese plot.
- xNeil 3y agoA lot of the response in India regarding overpopulation came about during the 1970s, when the Prime Minister's son, worried about overpopulation, started a Compulsory Sterilisation Program, the horrors off which I have heard a lot about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjay_Gandhi#Compulsory_sterilization_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjay_Gandhi#Compulsory_steri...
- j-bos 3y agoScott Alexander had an interesting article about the mind and incentives behind those sterilizations. Section 2 delves into the topic: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/galton-ehrlich-buck https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/galton-ehrlich-buck
- xNeil 3y agoThank you very, very much for the link sir! Learnt a whole lot from it.
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoLook up India’s population density and fertility rate. Not as dire as you think. Indians consume much less resources per capita than Wester countries too.
- verteu 3y agoKeep in mind India's fertility rate was much higher at the time of the anecdote (~3.35 children/woman in 2000 vs 2.05 now).
- lvl102 3y agoIs it really? India and China make up 40% of the world. Their “output” to the world is fraction of that. And that’s not gonna change due to culture.
- ern 3y agoI was having recently at a management dinner with an Indian colleague (interestingly I think he's a Christian, not a Hindu) who said "I don't want to live in place with lots of Muslims, they mess things up". It's interesting how brazenly open he was, and this was in a western country. I put forward a strong candidate for his team, who happened to have grown up in Saudi Arabia, and he was inexplicably rejected, although in retrospect it made sense. The article also brushes up against caste, but doesn't explore the role of caste networks in tech. If that's the "bridge to the west" that India is pushing, I hope some of those tendencies are stamped out, hard.
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoDo you have any pointers to data (not anecdotes) on prevalence of these issues?
- butterNaN 3y agoYou demonstrate how important it is to stomp out the rightwing ultranationalism festering in India. It is not solely India's problem any more. There is irreparable damage being done to the Indian psyche, and it is not going to be contained (unlike, for example, if it was China). Especially considering the impending climate disaster is going to disproportionately affect India and neighbors, resulting in social disaster, mass migration of a scale not seen before. Indian problems are increasingly world problems.
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoThe world's problems are the world's problems. We Indians migrating into other societies see issues that the societies don't see themselves: (asian-hate, white supremacy, sunni-shia violence, anti-semitism). But I am glad once again the world (ahem, the West) deigned to "fix" India before fixing themselves.
- butterNaN 3y agoYou make it sound like it's two separate buckets. The world and India can, strike that, have to work together. As an Indian myself, I will accept any help I get to fight rightwing bigotry. And I will help fight rightwing bigotry elsewhere. People need to stop thinking as if borders are natural phenomenon.
- butterNaN 3y agoIt honestly feels a statistical inevitability. I highly recommend the book "The Discovery of India" by Jawaharlal Nehru [0] - I think it is a must read, for non-Indians and Indians (especially) alike. India, if anything, has been under-contributing to the world in last couple of centuries. As an Indian, I feel both fear and cheer about the "Indian influence". India has been a deeply hierarchical society for a millenniums, and people of Indian subcontinent (I like the term "Thaalis") still have this inertial, hierarchical mental holdover, conscious or otherwise. My hope is that instead of it manifesting[1][2], it is challenged and defeated in the long run. And 'the good parts' are utilised for the betterment of the world. (Of course, it is never a one-way street, influence is dialectic. In many ways Thaali itself has been deeply influenced by the world. Not saying that's a good or a bad thing necessarily) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discovery_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discovery_of_India [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/google-caste-equality-labs-tanuja-gupta/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/google-... [2]: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/caste-california-tech-giants-confront-ancient-indian-hierarchy-2022-08-15/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/caste-...