Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy

Description

Over the centuries, millions of migrant labourers sailed from the Indian subcontinent, across the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, to shape what is now the world’s largest diaspora. This book recovers the histories and legacies of those ‘coolie’ migrants, and presents a new paradigm for the diplomatic history of independent India, going beyond high politics to explore how indenture, emigration and international relations became entangled.

Before and after independence, Indian notions of the international realm as a sanctified space were shaped by migrant journeys; this was a space of anxiety in which to negotiate the ‘coolie stain’ on the country’s reputation. Discourse was defined by intersections of caste, class, race and gender—and framed the migrant worker as the quintessential ‘other’ of Indian diplomacy.

Drawing on rich, multi-archival analysis spanning the vast geographies of labour migration, Kalathmika Natarajan pieces together the stories of quarantine camps en route to Ceylon; cultural and educational missions in the Caribbean; discretionary passport policies in India; and the mediation of immigrant life in Britain. The result is a nuanced history from the interwar period to the decades after independence, and a critical analysis centring both caste and the negotiation of ‘undesirable’ mobility as foundational to Indian diplomacy.

Reviews

‘A remarkable, pathbreaking work—one of the finest takes on Indian diplomacy to have published for years, with enormous significance for historical and contemporary understanding. This exceptional archival study will herald a new wave of scholarship.’ — Vineet Thakur, Assistant Professor of History, Leiden University, and author of Postscripts on Independence: Foreign Policy Discourses in India and South Africa

‘Natarajan demonstrates how startlingly conjoined are the figures of the “coolie” migrant and the Indian diplomat. Drawing on an impressive array of sources and an archipelago of locations far from the conventional sites of interstate diplomacy, she transforms our understanding of diplomatic history.’ — Rahul Rao, Reader in International Political Thought, University of St Andrews, and author of The Psychic Lives of Statues and Third World Protest

‘An insightful analysis of how both British and independent India addressed the complex and sensitive issue of Indian labourers overseas. Carefully researched, it provides a timely and nuanced contribution to the study of Indian diplomacy and migration.’ — Andrea Benvenuti, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations, University of New South Wales, and author of Nehru’s Bandung

‘Drawing on archival materials in multiple languages, Natarajan constructs a powerful, clear-eyed argument, decentring her analysis from typical sites of political power, and instead emphasising the workings of caste, class, race and gender in the making of Indian diplomacy.’ — Kalyani Ramnath, Assistant Professor of History, Columbia University, and author of Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–62

‘Revelatory for any reader curious about postcolonial India’s quest for higher international status. With inventiveness and clarity, Natarajan reveals key aspects of modern Indian diplomacy as a project of hierarchy-fixated caste elites—one subverted by anti-caste resistance.’ — Kate Sullivan de Estrada, Associate Professor in the International Relations of South Asia, University of Oxford, and co-author of Rising India

Author(s)

Kalathmika Natarajan is Lecturer in Modern South Asian History at the University of Exeter. Her interdisciplinary research combines critical approaches to diplomatic history and South Asian migration. She has worked at the University of Edinburgh, and received her doctoral degree from the University of Copenhagen.