As Shashi Tharoor eloquently put it, there is no typical Indian. Across the nation, language, religion or caste, geography does not bestow one with an archetypal Indian identity. A Tamil Muslim shares much more with a Tamil Brahmin or a Tamil Christian in a way than he does with a Kashmiri Muslim and a Hindu from Bihar and Hindu from Kerala can perhaps be as different as chalk and cheese. Languages, dialects, costumes, customs, religions bestow us with multiple identities and therefore in a way we all are minorities. What unites us in this multireligious, multilingual and multiethnic land? Is it just our national boundaries? 

It can be said that immigrants perhaps face a certain kind of disorientation more frequently than most people. Among the immigrants, questions pertaining to the ‘real’ you more often than not stem from geographical displacement, cultural shock, perception of one’s varied ethnic background, and contrasting ideologies and habits etc. The question as to one’s Indian identity and its significance emerges when one lives as an immigrant outside India for a period of time. 

The immigrants who went as indentured labourers to lands such as Surinam, Fiji, Mauritius or Trinidad in the early 19th century provide an interesting observation. The influence of colonizers and native cultures on Indian immigrants in these lands is complex. In some countries, even today; people of Indian origin strongly adhere to their Indian identity while in some the local cultures have inextricably intertwined with the same. In the Surinam, Hindustani (though unintelligibly mixed with Dutch and local language) is the second largest spoken language after Dutch with 27 % of the populace being of Indian origin but in Guyana, despite the large number of Indian origin populace (34%), Hindi has not persisted.

In recent years, there have been so many books and movies on recent Indian immigrant experiences. One facet that is often expressed by children of the immigrants (who emigrated in the 1960s or a little later to USA, UK or Canada) is the stringent adherence of their parents to their homeland way of life and utter confusion and identity crises that they go through (being caught between their peers and their parents on various aspects of way of life), not being able to call themselves as Indian as their parents. 

Within India, one is acutely aware of one’s lingual, religious, caste and geographical differences in social interactions but as an immigrant, the very same differences disappear and the commonalities take over. We tend to unite enthusiastically over our shared history and culture. Infact, this is not case only within the Indian community, but we tend to connect with fellow Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Srilankans as well (with whom we share history and culture). Yes, it is natural phenomenon one would say, but one would have never thought so while living in India (especially, seeing the frenzy over Pakistan-India political history or the cricket matches between the two nations) without ever having had the opportunity or benefit of such interactions. 

Another new turn of events is the wide acceptance of the Indian identity with pride. With increasing number of Indian success stories and the near double digit economic growth, there is self–confidence not for nationalistic reasons alone. A part of that also has to do with the realization that the diversity that one witnesses in India is unique and worth celebrating in an increasingly factious world. With the emergence of the collective Indian presence globally, even those immigrants who reluctantly acquiesced their Indian identity earlier might find themselves accepting it with pride and aplomb.