This interdisciplinary collection of essays offers a window onto the overseas Indian and Chinese communities in Asia. Contributors discuss the interactive role of the cultural and religious ‘other’, the diasporic absorption of local beliefs and customs, and the practical business networks and operational mechanisms unique to these communities. Growing out of an international workshop organized by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and the Centre of Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong, this volume explores material, cultural and imaginative features of the immigrant communities and brings together these two important communities within a comparative framework.

Immigrants from China started settling in Calcutta, the British capital of colonial India, from the late eighteenth century. Initially, the immigrant community comprised of male workers, many of whom sojourned between China and India. Only in the early twentieth century was there a large influx of women and children from China. To address the educational needs of the children - both immigrant and locally-born - several Chinese-medium primary and middle schools were established in Calcutta by the community in the 1920s and 1930s. Using many hitherto unexplored textual sources and interviews in India, China, and Canada, this detailed and unprecedented study examines the history and significance of these Chinese-medium schools. It focuses on the role they played in preserving Chinese cultural identity not only through the use of educational curricula and textbooks imported from China, but also with the emphasis on the need to return to the ancestral homeland for higher education. This study also breaks new ground by examining the impact of political and other factionalism within the community as well as the India-China conflict of 1962 that resulted in the closure of most of the Chinese-medium schools in Calcutta by the 1980s.

Underscoring the unique and multifaceted interactions between ancient India and ancient China, 'India and China: Interactions through Buddhism and Diplomacy' collates the classic works of the preeminent Indian scholar of Chinese history and Buddhism, Professor Prabodh Chandra Bagchi (1898-1956). The volume's essays provide a wide-ranging and thorough investigation of both Sino-Indian Buddhism and cultural relations between the two ancient nations, and are accompanied by a variety of Bagchi's short articles, English translations of a number of his Bengali essays, and contemporary articles analyzing his contribution to the wider field of Sino-Indian study.

Since the 1960s the number of Indian immigrants and their descendants living in the United States has grown dramatically. During the same period, the make-up of this community has also changed—the highly educated professional elite who came to this country from the subcontinent in the 1960s has given way to a population encompassing many from the working and middle classes. In her fascinating account of Indian immigrants in New York City, Madhulika S. Khandelwal explores the ways in which their world has evolved over four decades.How did this highly diverse ethnic group form an identity and community? Drawing on her extensive interviews with immigrants, Khandelwal examines the transplanting of Indian culture onto the Manhattan and Queens landscapes. She considers festivals and media, food and dress, religious activities of followers of different faiths, work and class, gender and generational differences, and the emergence of a variety of associations.Khandelwal analyzes how this growing ethnic community has gradually become "more Indian," with a stronger religious focus, larger family networks, and increasingly traditional marriage patterns. She discusses as well the ways in which the American experience has altered the lives of her subjects.

The booklet opens with the Delaware Indians prior to 1818. White Americans quickly replaced the natives. Germanic people arrived during the mid-nineteenth century. African American indentured servants and free blacks migrated to Indianapolis. After the Civil War, southern blacks poured into the city. Fleeing war and political unrest, thousands of eastern and southern Europeans came to Indianapolis. Anti-immigration laws slowed immigration until World War II. Afterward, the city welcomed students and professionals from Asia and the Middle East and refugees from war-torn countries such as Vietnam and poor countries such as Mexico. Today, immigrants make Indianapolis more diverse and culturally rich than ever before.

This book is a macro-study of Indian business communities in Singapore through different phases of their growth since colonial times. It goes beyond the conventional labour-history approach to study Indian immigrants to Southeast Asia, both in terms of themselves and their connections with the peoples' movements. It looks at how Indian business communities negotiated with others in the environments in which they found themselves and adapted to them in novel ways. It especially brings into focus the patterns and integration of the Indian networks in the large-scale transnational flows of capital, one of the least-studied aspects of the diaspora history in this part of the world.