Becoming the Garos of Bangladesh: Policies of exclusion and the ethnicisation of a 'Tribal' minority

This paper focuses on the relation between state policies and ethnicisation in the borderland of Bengal. On the basis of a case study of the lowland Garos of Bangladesh, the paper argues that attempts by the successor states of Bengal, East Pakistan and Bangladesh to 'other', and even 'exclude', the Garos have significantly impacted on Garo self-perception and organisation, resulting in the formation of a close-knit ethnic community. The paper focuses on three twentieth-century episodes in the lives of the lowland Garos. The first is the 1936 British administrative reorganisation of Mymensingh District which resulted in the emergence of a notion of a separate Garo homeland in Bengal. The second is the mass exodus of Garos across the international border into the Indian hills which took place in 1964. This traumatic experience pushed the Garos to unify. The third is the Independence War of 1971 and the birth of Bangladesh. All three episodes are directly related to state policies which excluded the Garos (as well as the neighbouring minorities) from the dominant discourse of Bengali/Bangladeshi citizenship. The paper concludes that the Garos of Bangladesh are a close-knit ethnic community - not in spite of these state attitudes - but rather as an outcome of them

RE: pedagogy – after neutrality

Within the UK and in many parts of the world, official accounts of what it is to make sense of religion are framed within a rhetorics of neutrality in which such study is premised upon the possibility of dispassionate engagement and analysis. This paper, which is largely theoretical in scope, explores both the affordances and the costs of such an approach which has become ‘black boxed’ on account of the work that it achieves. A series of new orientations within the academy that are broadly associated with post-structuralist philosophies, feminist and post-colonial studies, together with insights from Science and Technology Studies, question the plausibility of these claims for neutrality whilst in turn raising a series of new questions and priorities. It therefore becomes necessary to re-think and re-frame what it is to make sense of religious and cultural difference after neutrality. The gathering and co-ordination of new planes of sense-making that are responsive to an emergent series of epistemological, ontological, and ethical orientations are considered. Some of the distinctive pedagogical implications of such an approach that engages material practice, difference and uncertainty are then entertained

Country Report: Indian migration to the Netherlands

CARIM-India is co-financed by the European University Institute and the European Union.This paper presents the past and present state of affairs regarding migration from India to the Netherlands. The Netherlands have never been a very popular destination for migrants from India. If we, however, include the Hindustanis in the so-called Indian diaspora, the Netherlands are home to the second largest Indian diaspora in Europe. The Hindustanis are the descendants of British-Indian indentured laborers who migrated to the Dutch colony of Surinam between 1873 and 1916, and who moved on to the Netherlands in particular during the 1970s and 1980s. At present, the "Indian diaspora" in the Netherlands includes approximately 160,000 Hindustanis and 21,729 Indians (first and second generation immigrants). This paper deals with all those with apparent (ancestral) connections to India. Two phenomena stand out and make the Dutch case particularly interesting for a study of Indian migration to Europe. Besides the presence of the relatively large group of Hindustanis, we are currently witnessing a remarkable increase in the immigration of Indian knowledge workers in the country. In practice, the two distinct categories of people of Indian descent have very little in common. This paper investigates these different categories of ("old" and "new") migrants and analyzes the implications of contemporary Indian and Dutch policies on Indian migration to the Netherlands and on processes of identity formation amongst these migrants of Indian origin.CARIM-India: Developing a knowledge base for policymaking on India-EU migratio

Yearning for faraway places: the construction of migration desires among young and educated Bangladeshis in Dhaka

These days, the imagined destinations of ever more people, particularly in the 'global South', are not where they were born but elsewhere. Using a case study of educated (lower) middle-class youth in Dhaka, this paper attempts to demonstrate that for many 'aspiring migrants', the yearning for leaving is a metaphor for disappointment and disengagement rather than the first step towards transnational migration. Economic growth, rapid urbanisation and the increasing investment in education infest the emerging urban (lower) middle-class youth with new 'modern' lifestyle desires that cannot be fulfilled in their home country and generate a sense of disengagement with Bangladesh. The paper focuses in particular on how the - culturally embedded - imaginations of foreign places link up to personal (re-)evaluations of local lives. Nearly all informants explained how local socio-economic, political and existential insecurities made them yearn for 'safe' places where their dreams could be fulfilled. © 2013 Taylor & Francis