Search

This paper focuses on women of Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin in the US diaspora to examine how religious identities unfold within multi-layered transnational structures that range from political histories and events to active webs of family and community relationships that stretch across the diaspora. Our analysis draws on focus groups and interviews with highly educated Hindu and Muslim women in the US. For these women, approaches to religion were marked by multiple points of tension and negotiation, including the work of situating oneself within the intersecting power structures of the diaspora and country of origin, including a transnational sphere that is increasingly crafted through the reach of social media. These women's narratives show they are minorities in the US, and part of majorities in countries of origin, but, sometimes, outsiders to the local politics of religions. Focusing on these women allows us to reflect on the ways in which histories and contemporary events shape contemporary South Asia far beyond its geographic location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the experiences of Indian-origin groups in the USA and UK to examine transnational forms of ethnicity. It focuses specifically on ethnic organisations that are engaged in constructing transnational ethnic identities, using religion as a means for constructing new, virtually linked communities. Based on web-based data of Hindu student groups in the USA and UK, this study examines transnational ethnic identities these groups deploy on their websites, and to what extent these are similar across the USA and UK. As Hinduism is a religion with no uniform sets of practices (chosen religious texts, practices and beliefs are culturally, regionally and family dependent), it provides a good basis for examining whether the identities constructed by these groups are transnational, that is, the same elements are emphasised by groups in the two countries to construct ethnic identities that transcend the specificities of the national and local contexts. It also examines the structure of links between websites to show whether websites that appear to be nation-specific are actually linked to each other to create a transnational network. The findings of this study suggest that the study of transnationalism needs to be extended beyond the current focus on ‘home’ and ‘host’ countries to consider what happens in multiple ‘host’ countries. It also shows that organised groups promote homogenised versions of virtual ethnicity as they build transnational networks across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]