Heterogenising the Indian Hindu Diaspora in Thailand

Abstract

The Indian diaspora is a diverse community of migrants who live dispersed around the globe. This includes the situation of Indian emigration to Thailand, which has been ongoing for hundreds of years. Several scholars in Indian Diaspora Studies have previously contributed to an understanding of the different social groups of the heterogenous Indian diaspora in terms of ethnicities, religions, periods of migration, and social and political consciousness. However, Indian Diaspora Studies in Thailand undertaken by Thai scholars over the past decade have only focused on the Siamese Brahmin and the Thai-Indian Sikh and Muslim diaspora in Thailand, and have tended to view Hindu immigrants to Thailand as a homogeneous group. Their contribution is constrained by considering migrants only through the lens of ethnicity, and dualistically conceptualising ethnic boundaries between Indianness and Thainess as a result. This paper, in conversation with previous scholarship, applies the notion of heterogeneity to understand the complexity of the Indian Hindu diaspora in contemporary Thai societies. This article, based on case studies in the Chiang Mai province, asserts that the Thai-Indian Hindu diaspora consists of heterogeneous groups that utilise multi-ethnic-religious identities as cultural strategies to establish their self-identification. Therefore, the Indian Hindu diaspora in Thai society is associated with the (re)formation and recombination of traditional and modern diasporic types of consciousness, reflecting the complexity of the Indian Hindu diaspora in Thailand today.