4 - Exclusion and Inclusion: Navigation Strategies among Hindus in the Diaspora – A Case Study from Denmark

Summary

The concepts of exclusion and inclusion are not only concerned with social or cultural processes where exclusion and inclusion strategies are used in an overall political framework and where individuals or a group of people are either included or excluded in relation to shared privileges. Exclusion and inclusion can also be seen as part of mobility strategies from within, where a group of people use exclusion and inclusion in a situation of cultural discontinuity, trying to find new ways of constructing meaning in a new setting (such changes may be necessitated by modernity, globalization, or a diaspora situation, etc.). In doing so, they also construct a shared understanding of belonging to a specific cultural, ethnic or religious tradition. This is an ongoing process of negotiation during which the understanding of belonging are redefined. This process can be found among all groups of people, irrespective of time or place.

This chapter will argue that these types of negotiations are most prevalent and profound among groups living abroad or in diaspora. In such cases, a tradition (whether religious, cultural or ethnic) becomes part of a society that does not share its history and that played no role in its formation. Therefore, the tradition is confronted first hand with various paradigms and worldviews, which, up until that point, it had not been part of. This does not mean that the tradition is lost; it is simply reshaped and, in this way, it remains part of an identity that connects its members to the country they have left.