Asia in Europe, Europe in Asia

11. Family Linkages between India and Britain: Views from Gujarat and London

242 Mario Rutten and Pravin J. Patel 11 Family Linkages between India and Britain: Views from Gujarat and London Mario Rutten and Pravin J. Patel International migration, although certainly not a new phenomenon, has increased over the past few decades (Appleyard 1991, p. 5). People of South Asian origin, in particular from India, have always formed a significant part of this migration process. The Indian diaspora as it exists today gained momentum in modern times after the abolition of slavery in the British empire, and the subsequent introduction of the indenture system in 1834, followed in the 1920s by the kangani or maistry system. Together with the smaller-sized ‘passage’ or ‘free’ migration, these forms of migration resulted in the fact that between 1834 and 1938 about 30 million Indians left their country of origin. Most of them went to British colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Although many of these migrants did return to India in the end, a substantial number of them settled down in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Mauritius, South Africa, Burma (Myanmar), Ceylon (Sri Lanka), British Malaya (Malaysia), British Guyana (Guyana), and Trinidad and Tobago. As a Family Linkages between India and Britain 243 result, many of these countries still have today a sizeable population of Indian origin (Jain 1989, p. 165). Migration from India to the West is a more recent phenomenon. At the end of the twentieth century, about 2 million persons of South Asian origin resided in Europe, the United States and Canada. The majority of them, about 1.26 million, live in Britain (Jain 1993, pp. 34–35). Over the past four decades, a substantial number of studies have been conducted on Indian migrants in Britain. Together, these studies provide us with insight into various historical and contemporary aspects of the migration patterns of different Indian communities. Geographically, Indian migrants in Britain are concentrated in the urban counties of England, from Kent in the Southeast to Lancashire in the Northwest. The largest number of them, about 36 per cent of the total Indian population, live in Greater London, while 22 per cent have settled in the Midlands area (Ram 1989, pp. 101–2). With regard to their region of origin in India, the Gujarati and Punjabi communities are by far the largest Indian communities in Britain (Jain 1993, p. 36). Following this predominance of Gujarat and Punjab as the region of origin, many studies conducted on the Indian migrants in Britain over the past forty years have focused on these two communities.1 These studies usually focus on the position of the migrants in Britain, discussing their socio-economic background and problems of adaptation, adjustment, assimilation, or integration into the host society. Although most of them also refer to the history of chain migration of the migrants and occasionally to their present-day relations with their home region, linkages between the Indian community in Britain and their relatives in India are seldom the focus of research. The same holds true for those studies that deal with various aspects of those communities in Gujarat or Punjab that have a history of migration abroad. Although these studies often point to the importance of emigration on the local society and economy, the actual linkages that may exist between those who left the region and those who stayed behind are usually not empirically studied.2 This paper discusses the social linkages between Indian migrants in Britain and their family members in India. It considers the home and the migrant community in the same unit of analysis rather than as separate communities. It is based on fieldwork conducted in 1998 among members of the Patidar community in rural central Gujarat and among their relatives in London in 1999. In order to study the linkages between the 244 Mario Rutten and Pravin J. Patel Patidars of India and Britain we collected information through a survey of 313 households in six villages in central Gujarat who have relatives in Britain, out of which 157 were selected for in-depth case studies. This was followed by a survey among 159 Patidar households in Greater London, of which 80 were selected for in-depth case studies. Members of the Patidar households in Greater London originated from the six villages in central Gujarat and many of them were direct relatives of the families studied in India. Most of the quantitative information presented in this paper refers to...