“Capturing Hearts and Minds: Race, Affect, Transnationality and the ‘Model’ Diaspora’s Quest for Global Political Power”

In this Thesis, I ask how formations and performances of identity translate into the consolidation of state power. I argue that South Asian Indians within the “model” diaspora leverage their identities within the multicultural logics of white settler states to gain power. As I show, some bicultural Indians are complicit in settler colonialism; they create new formations of caste which collapse place and space and they do so to build a territorially unbounded Indian empire. An interrogation of the nexus of race, caste, class, and gender, as well as an analysis of affect, unearth the means by which these privileged Indians aspire to whiteness to amass power. To demonstrate these points, I use Nimrata Nikki Haley and Jagmeet Singh Jimmy Dhaliwal as case studies. In my argument, I use primary source materials including excerpts from Singh’s memoir, speeches, video clips, and newspaper articles in evidence of its claims and purposefully draws from a variety of research methods. Overall, this Thesis complicates scholarly understanding of racialized diasporic formations by calling attention to the power differentials inherent to “model” diasporas in white settler states.