Poonam Sharma
A Diaspora at the Crossroads
Millions of Indian-origin Americans are caught between the inherited dharmic values and the strong tides of assimilation. This battle is neither novel nor singular, but its impact on India’s international civilizational presence is abiding.
Former External Affairs Minister Shashi Tharoor recently criticized what he called the “silence of the diaspora” in the wake of American visa restrictions and trade tariffs on India. Suhag Shukla of Hindu American Foundation dismissed this charge, contending the diaspora can’t be brought into lockstep alignment with the Indian state. Scholar Pankaj Jain added a layer: prior to political mobilization lies cultural rootedness.With the H-1B tide receding and generations of Indian-Americans becoming increasingly submerged in America’s cultural mainstream, the community is at a crossroads. It is no longer a question of identity, but survival — cultural, civilizational, and ideological.
These three roles — critique, defense, and introspection — capture the fault lines of the Indian-American identity of today.
A Community That Is Not a Monolith
India’s diaspora in the U.S., numbering more than 5 million today, is exceptionally diverse. It is a tapestry of regional, linguistic, religious, and socio-economic strands. A Gujarati engineer who came during the IT boom of the 1990s and a Tamil student who arrived a year ago share the same American space but carry immensely different connections to their homeland.
This pluralism makes it difficult to assume any monolithic political voice. Tharoor acknowledges this, observing that second-generation Indian-Americans are frequently less emotively attached to India than their parents. India is not lived experience but inherited nostalgia for them.
Dharmic Culture vs. Cultural Nostalgia
The second generation’s interaction with Indian culture tends to be a performative one. Some attend Saturday language lessons, take classes in classical music or Bharatanatyam, or mark Diwali. But as Tharoor warns, these acts do not necessarily translate into a political or civilizational awareness.
Pankaj Jain contends that the solution is to tap into the dharmic nature of these traditions — not as extracurricular activities but as a means to a deeper connection with Isvara and Bharatiya civilizational heritage. Absent such spiritual moorings, culture can turn cosmetic instead of constitutive.
This is the decisive line between being Indian and recalling India.
The Power — and Pull — of Assimilation
No diaspora remains perpetually in suspension. History attests: Italians, Germans, Jews, Chinese — almost all the great waves of immigrants to America have undergone profound assimilation over the generations. Language is the first to go. Customs soon follow. Identity, once bright, dissolves into the Americanisation.
Indian-Americans are not unaffected. As second-generation young people fall in love, get married, and have children, their connection to India naturally weakens. Inter-linguistic marriages — e.g., between a Telugu boy and a Gujarati girl — become commoner by the day. Whether or not their children inherit either language or tradition is unclear.
If language transmission is failing even within the diaspora, inter-ethnic marriages beyond the community hasten this decline. Here lies the challenge at an existential level: can a consciousness of civilization hold on when its visible signs erode?
America’s Model vs. India’s Memory
The American system sustains itself on the melting pot — on mixing, not maintaining, separate identities. But there have been some successful resistance groups. The Jewish-American story is a remarkable one.
While ethnic differences among Americans of Jewish background have weakened to a considerable extent, their holy connection to Israel has remained intact. Two or three generations later, Israel still functions as a spiritual homeland, an anchor of identity.
For Indian-Americans, India is more than a place of birth — it is Bharat, a holy land of dharma. Whether or not this attachment can be sustained in the face of the forces of assimilation will depend on how deeply values of dharma are conveyed, not merely celebrated.
The National Interest and the Diasporic Voice
Diaspora politics is not just a matter of emotional connection — it determines geopolitical facts. Indian-Americans, one of the best-educated and most prosperous immigrant communities in the U.S., are among the most potent lobbies.
When the U.S. Congress was debating bills that were caustic about India on the issue of Article 370, they did not pass partly due to diaspora opposition. Likewise, diaspora lobbying has brought into the spotlight the persecution of Hindu and Sikh minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
This is where dharma and national interest meet. A diaspora rooted in its homeland does not require teaching by New Delhi. It will instinctively protect civilizational interests in its adopted country.
The Waning H-1B Tide and Its Implications
The Trump Administration’s constriction of the H-1B program was a turning point. The Indian flow that characterized the 1990s and 2000s is abating. With falling immigration, the identity of the diaspora will be redefined not by new entrants but by the decisions of the second and third generations.
This is not just a demographic realignment. This is a civilizational challenge. A community isolated from new cultural enforcers threatens to break down more quickly into the mainstream.
A Civilizational Duty
Indian-Americans tend to imagine themselves as people who are abroad. But in fact, they belong to a larger civilizational continuum. Bharat is not a nation — it is one of the world’s ancient living civilizations. To safeguard that heritage across seas is not a burden; it is an obligation.
This does not mean every Indian-American must parrot Delhi’s policies or march in political rallies. But it does mean understanding that dharma is more than culture — it is a way of life, a worldview, and a source of strength.
By nurturing that dharmic consciousness at home, through language, rituals, and community, Indian-Americans can ensure that Bharat remains more than a memory.
From Nostalgia to Sacred Bond
The Indian-American saga remains to be written. It can be another tale of cultural loss and assimilation. It can also be an example of how a civilization born millennia ago continues to thrive, even thousands of miles away from its roots.
This is not a decision based on policy, but on will — on whether children are being taught Sanskrit shlokas by their parents or merely English bedtime stories, whether temples are continued places of worship or become the backdrop for family Diwali parties, whether India is a homeland to be revered or a distant past page in the family album.
The assimilation is strong, but dharma has survived for thousands of years. If Indian-Americans wish, they can make it last in America as well.
