ABSTRACT
In the Indian context, the scholarly and public attention has focused on the more affluent diaspora in the USA, Australia, Canada and Europe. Scholars in Diaspora Studies interested in Indian diaspora tend to organise modern migrations from India historically into two relatively autonomous archives designated by the terms ‘old’ and ‘new’. The Indian Government’s interest in diaspora is rather new as it started growing only in the 1990s with the arrival of the new economic model. The feminist scholarship and its engagement with questions of displacement has accorded some visibility to the feminine perspective and has been instrumental in highlighting the gendered dimension of migrant experience. There are contradictory views on the notion of the emancipation of women within the indentured system. The Creolisation that happened in all post-indentured Indian diasporic communities to varying degrees offered new possibilities of resistance to strong Brahmanical Hinduism and its stranglehold on the Indian women, providing them with alternatives to rigid gender roles.
