Partisan dreams, fractured homeland: Gujarati diaspora politics in America

This essay explores the long-distance nationalism of the Gujarati diaspora in the United States, specifically its attempts to influence politics in the Gujarati homeland since 2002. Through an ethnographic focus on key political mobilizations surrounding the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's controversial leadership and entry into the United States, it examines how and why the diaspora actively shapes partisan politics in the homeland. The desire to endorse an illiberal political project of Hindutva through extensive appeals to liberal democracy such as electoral representation, the rule of law and personal freedoms and rights, is a crucial feature of Gujarati diaspora politics. It suggests that the complex transnational linkages between the Gujarati diaspora and Gujarat are best understood in terms of the diaspora's political and economic aspirations in the homeland.