Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy: Caste, Class and Indenture Abroad, 1914-67 [Paperback]

Uncovers the remarkable role of emigration, particularly of indentured laborers, in forging independent India's foreign relations.Over the centuries, millions of migrant laborers 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 labor 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 centering both caste and the negotiation of undesirable mobility as foundational to Indian diplomacy.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. 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 exceptionlc³