This volume adopts a cautiously critical stance vis-á -vis the framework of diaspora as applied to the Indian case. It does so through the use of different approaches, and, although the various authors do not necessarily agree on all points, the overall effect achieved is impressive, and refreshingly original. The only justification for this ‘afterword’ is to offer a slightly ‘décaleé’ view coming from an historian who has worked exclusively on one aspect of the South Asian diaspora, the dispersal of South Asian traders, a fairly specialised area of research, and someone who feels no particular loyalty, institutional or affective, to the diaspora framework. Here I shall try to reframe some of the questions regarding ‘’diaspora’’ in a more historical mode, by trying to look both at empirical facts and perceptions as they evolved over time. I am not going to consider the instrumental uses of the term ‘’Indian diaspora’’. It is clear that the Government of India, for its part, has good reasons to promote that notion, in the hope of economic and political gains, and nobody is going to begrudge them the right to do so. Similarly, diaspora studies have become a recognised sub-field within the broader field of South Asian studies, providing research grants and jobs aplenty, and it would be foolish to object to that. Last but not least, people of South Asian origin all over the world often feel that thinking of themselves as members of an overarching ‘’Indian’’ or ‘’South Asian’’ diaspora brings them benefits, both emotional and material, which are worth fighting for, and it would be churlish to deny them those benefits, however imaginary they might appear to be.

In discussing the genealogy of the ‘’diaspora’’ approach, which became dominant in the 1980s and 1990s, and replaced, as mentioned by Gijsbert Oonk in his very thorough introduction to this book, an earlier focus on ‘’Overseas Indians’’, I do not have a broad survey of the existing literature in mind, stressing its fortes and weaknesses, an exercise for which I do not feel qualified. As Oonk himself mentioned, one can find plenty of empirical cases, which do not fit within the ‘’diaspora’’ framework, but this, to my mind, is not a sufficient reason to reject it out of hand, as the same could be probably said of any similarly broad notion.