ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the constitution, politics and mappings of these complex landscapes of home and homeland. The Indian immigrants' sense of place, specifically homeland, afforded them a certain stability of meaning in their fast-changing world. The map of India outlined in a world map, an anthropomorphic image of Mother India, or a poem with references to real and imaginary geographical features were cultural forms and traditions that immigrants employed in order to sustain that sense of place. Such visual culture fired the imaginations of individuals belonging to a very diverse community of strangers divided by class, caste and ethnicity. Picturing India was an act of spatial control, it ordered the otherwise complex physical and cognitive aspects of the immigrants' cultural landscape. Mapping India produced a visual language by which immigrants located themselves in their fluctuating worlds. Political maps were redrawn and reconceived in ways that allowed individuals to display multiple/alternative allegiances.
