Modimania abroad - India's growing might & democratisation of diaspora politics

The Bollywood-style grand rallies that Narendra Modi addressed in parts of the world amidst rousing welcome have caught the imagination of the intellectuals both in India and abroad. The Indian Prime Minister is going to address another such rally this Friday afternoon in the grandiose of the Wembley Stadium. For some it is like thumping his 56-inch chest amidst all the talk of unfettered arrogance, and for others it is having the rich and the powerful non-resident Indians on board for a quid pro quo.

The grand community reception at Wembley has become the talk of the town especially after the drubbing Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received at the hustings in Bihar, one of India's least developed states, ripped apart by caste relations and bloody politics. When the allegations of growing intolerance in India have crossed its shore and Modi is being blamed for his stoic silence, the caricature surrounding the Indian Prime Minister is that he speaks more when abroad than in India. His extensive and grand foreign trips even earned Modi the laurel of being branded India's non-resident prime minister.

For me, however, these grand and festive congregations are expressions of India's growing might in the fields of global politics and economics, which remained suppressed and subdued for various historical and geopolitical reasons. India might still be the home of one-third of the world’s poor and yet Indians at home and abroad want to see her more as an emerging economy. The euphoria surrounding unending opportunities often overshadow the thoughts that India is also ripped apart by stark inequality.

Globalisation of Bollywood

Modi is not the first Indian politician to use non-resident Indians to his political advantage. Katherine Frank’s book on Indira Gandhi would show how the former Indian prime minister used the Indian community in the United Kingdom to campaign against the Janata Party government when she was thrown out of power. The community of Kashmiri Pandits in London always stood rock solid with the Congress party and the Nehru-Gandhi family in particular. This support was not without adequate compensation in the form of political and economic patronage. Those in the know of things know how the Kashmiri head of an Indian news organisation got support from successive Congress dispensations in running a highly successful business in London’s upmarket Regent Street.

Grant Thornton India Tracker 2015

The Bollywood-style festivity also stems from increased globalisation of India’s highly successful film industry. Before I came to the UK in 1999, I never knew that Bollywood was such a recognised form of entertainment industry here which strived more on the glitz and glamour of the colourful Indian society rather than its trials and tribulations with poverty, inequality and discrimination.

So what we are seeing today is not a completely new phenomenon in itself and rather a culmination of a trend which has been work in progress for decades. In fact, over the past decade or so managing the Indian community in the UK and roping them in with the representatives of the Indian government here have become much more democratic than what it was for decades since independence.

The Independence Day celebrations, which once was within the confines of the High Commission building, Nehru Centre or the official residence of the High Commissioner near Kensington Palace Gardens with the same set of invitees - with close links with the Indian establishment both here in the UK and back home - every year has now been opened to the Indian population at large since the time of High Commissioner Shiv Shankar Mukherjee. Over the past few years anybody can attend the Independence Day celebrations at the Indian Gymkhana in Osterley rather than being at the good books of the “Indian Baboos” running their self-styled empire inside the India House at Aldwych.

Evenly balanced relation

The "Gujarati asmita" or the pride of the Gujarati people backing Modi abroad is nothing different from the Kashmiris backing the Nehru-Gandhi family, especially Mrs Gandhi. The symbiotic relationship between the politicians in power and the benefactors abroad is still the same. The only change that has happened over the years is democratisation of the process of engaging with the non-resident Indians in the United Kingdom. One doesn't need to be in the good books of the people at the helm to avail some of the basic facilities. The non-resident Indians are now treated with greater respect by the Indian establishment than it was during the Congress regime. Recall how Mrs Gandhi turned her back to the people of Indian origin who were thrown out of Uganda as part of Idi Amin's Africanisation Project.

The relationship between non-resident Indians and the Government of India has become evenly balanced since the days of economic liberalisation in 1991. The remittances from all around the globe and especially from the Middle East keep India's coffers full with dollars and pound sterling so as to allow the government of the day to engage in economic risk-taking and not count the pennies and the cents needed to keep the oil-pool account up and running. The 30 million Indians living abroad contribute an estimated $70 billion to the national economy each year in the form of remittances.

The suspicious attitude of the Indian establishment towards the non-residents have eased as the government now can see the benefits, including financial, economic, political and diplomatic, of a vibrant expatriate Indian community. The policy-makers in India's archaic North and South Blocks have now realised that China's strength stems not only from its financial and military muscles but also from a vibrant and effective expatriate community.

If India wishes to match China, it can hardly overlook its diaspora.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com All comments are personal.