GRID lecture on Conceptualising Sandwich Cultures by Professor Yogesh Atal

GRID in collaboration with the Department of Sociology had arranged a joint lecture by Professor Yogesh Atal on Conceptualizing Sandwich Cultures on 21^st January 2010.  Professor Atal is a leading sociologist and has published extensively on the Indian Diaspora.  Professor Atal has had a distinguished career and retired from the UNESCO in 1997 as Principal Director of Social Sciences. Since then he has served as Director on the boards of several educational institutions and chaired high powered committees on education. 

In his lecture, Professor Atal spoke at length on the need to study the Indian Diaspora – the old and the new. Since Diaspora has now become a political term, he spoke of how one needs to come up with an operational definition of the term ‘Diaspora’ at the very outset in order to make research on it more effective. This definition must be universally applicable, thus making the study universally applicable. It is also important to study what kind of conditions – in the home country and the host county – led to the creation of diaspora. In addition, there is a need to tackle issues of demographic imbalance in different diasporas.  

Professor Atal also stressed the importance of focusing on the literatures by diasporics in their host countries. He spoke of how fieldwork, case studies and interviews should be made an integral and essential part of a diasporic study in order to make it meaningful and authentic. 

He concluded by suggesting that if inter-disciplinarity was made visible, the study of diasporics will be beneficial and could provide solutions to the issues faced by them.