ABSTRACT
Contemporary Indian labour migration to the Gulf countries is a phenomenon which is about four decades old. It began after the escalation in oil prices in 1973–74 and subsequent years (Jain 2005). Unlike their predecessors who migrated to the various British colonies before India’s independence and the ‘brain drain’ type émigrés who went to live and work in metropolitan countries of Europe and North America after independence, the Gulf migrants are the transitory migrants as stringent residency and citizenship laws as well as the contractual nature of their work bar them from permanent settlement in these predominantly Muslim countries (see Jain 2003a).
