From: "Salil Tripathi" <salil61-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Ludicrous assumptions - as usual!
Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2002 09:03:01 +0000


Omar,

I'm restricting my reply to your question:

> > 2) How much migration occurs anyway, in the first
> > place, between Third-World countries, particularly
> > involving the move to other Third-World countries w/
> > different languages? This is not particular to the
> > Arab-BlackAFrican relationship. Reasons? I think
> > obvious: familiarity w/ colonial language, dreams of
> > 'lands of opportunity', postcolonial psychological
> > legacies, etc.
> >

Not true. Just consider the Indian Diaspora, though I am sure the Chinese 
Diaspora has as many stories to tell. Indians migrated to Africa, East Asia, 
South East Asia, for many centuries before 1497, the year Vasco da Gama set 
sail to reach India. The Indians who went to what is now Indonesia in the 
11th and 12th century, went to a terrain where they did not know the 
language. Some built empires there -- Srivijaya being one of them. There was 
a Cham civilization in Vietnam. The temples of Borobudur and Prambanan are 
all remnants of Indic influence beyond India. One can argue that that's when 
India was not India; or that India was rich then, and not a third world 
country; but that would be a semantic distinction. I understood your 
response to mean that the Indian Diaspora can be seen only through the prism 
of plantation labor, which was taken to parts of the British empire, E 
Africa, S Africa, SE Asia, the Caribbean, etc. And the more recent, 
professional migration from India into the West is because of facility with 
a colonial language. I question that assumption; movement of Indians beyond 
their geographical territory is at least a thousand year old phenomenon; and 
it is possible that the Chinese Diaspora is similarly ancient. Cheng Ho's 
expeditions in SE Asia and Indian Ocean predate West's colonization of the 
East.

Salil

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