Political parties in India have also shown greater enthusiasm in courting the diasporic population. All Indian parties have used the rhetoric of nationalism while engaging the diaspora, but there are significant differences among them. The Congress Party has generally emphasized the economic aspects of the diaspora's relationship to India and has used strong nationalist rhetoric to mobilize the overseas population for economic investment. Occasionally, it uses anti-Pakistan rhetoric in the context of representing the interests of India in international forums or in the United States. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made serious attempts to mobilize overseas Hindus in support of its ideology of a Hindu nation, along with following the economic-investment framework to attract the diaspora.
Hindu nationalism or Hindutva -- an ideology that propagates the establishment of India as a religious Hindu nation -- has been systematically promoted among overseas Indians. There have been organized attempts in the United States to mobilize funds and other resources for the Hindutva cause. The ideology has tried to tap into the need of Hindu Indian immigrants for a cultural-religious identity in an American society defined primarily by racial identity (Rajagopal 2000). Although nationalism is a common theme in the attempt to attract diasporic communities to the country of origin, it is a particular kind of narrow, religion-based nationalism that has been part of the BJP's diasporic discourse. -- From The Limits of Transnational Mobilization: Indian American Lobby Groups and the India-US Civil Nuclear Deal (Sangay Mishra) in *Indian Diaspora and Transnationalsm* edited by Ajaya Kumar Sahoo, Michiel Baas, Thomas Faist. Rawat Publications, 2012 ISBN 978-81-316-0515-8 -- FN Land +91-832-240-9490 Cell +91-982-212-2436 [email protected] <[email protected]>
