Author: Karen Isaksen Leonard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 402
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195693353
Description
This book is a comparative study of Hyderabadi emigrants settling in Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, Canada, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates at the end of the twentieth century. Based on ten years of fieldwork and extensive interviews, it traces Hyderabadi culture and institutions in these places of settlement, looking at the different versions of Hyderabadi history transmitted and the personal networks and collective bodies formed abroad. Hyderabad, Islamic, and Urdu associations, in addition to other groups are surveyed, as are the marriages of the migrants and the subsequent generations. The author shows how memories of old Hyderabad are retained, redefined, or discarded depending on generation, gender, class, and connections to the Nizam's former state of Hyderabad and the national narratives of the new sites of settlement. Throughout the book, she emphasizes the role of the state in identity formation, the importance of language and religion for retention and reformulation of identities, and the instability of diasporic communities both within and across national boundaries.
Contents
Lists of Maps and Illustrations
Preface
Starting Points
Necessary Orientations
Sites of Settlement
Pakistan: Changing Nations
The United Kingdom: An Early Outpost
Australia: Things Fall Apart
The United States: New Frontiers
Canada: Mixing In
Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates: Future Reconfigured
Hyderabad: Reorientations
Hyderabadis Abroad: Locating Home
Notes
Bibliography
Glossary
Index