Thursday, 24 October 2019

Will the Largest Diaspora Become a Global Missionary Force?

The globalization of the Indian populace has built bridges for Indian Christians to engage the world at large.

World Economic Forum recently reported that India has the largest diaspora in the world, citing the latest migrant stock dataset from the United Nations population division.

In 2019, the number of international migrants reached 272 million, and India was the leading country of origin (18M), followed by Mexico (12M) and China (11M).

These figures do not include all people of a particular national origin who have switched citizenship or children born to them in foreign countries. A McKinsey report says that 90 percent of cross border migrants move voluntarily for economic reasons. They earn 20-30 percent less than native workers and contribute to about $3 trillion more to the global GDP than if they had worked in their own countries.

The WEF claim, however, has a technical problem with its definitions of migrant and diaspora. China may still have the largest diaspora with its long history of migration and India is a close second, but the Indian population is more dispersed. One may assert that the Sun never sets on the Indian Diaspora (akin to the British Empire in the past).

Last month, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a public rally in Houston, Texas to showcase the size and vitality of the Indian American community, now nearly five million strong and the most educated with the highest household income of all ethnic groups in the country.

A football stadium filled with over 50,000 people from a wealthy, model minority group was irresistible to the witnessing crowd and support-seeking American politicians, including U.S. President Donald Trump, several senior elected officials, and business leaders.

The Houston event exposed the hypocrisy of both nations. It was a carefully choreographed publicity stunt and succinctly ...

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from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/33R8Vcu

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