Locals and cosmopolitans of little India : a sociological study of the Indian student community at Minnesota , U.S.A.

Drawing upon the resources of the theory of ethnic and status commu nity, the author studies an Indian student colony in U. S. A. where, even though the Indian students find themselves as temporary guests of a foreign country, they exhibit suffi cient cultural differences from their hosts to be a source of numerous minor and major confrontations. Even though they view their stay as temporary and though they lack many features of a full community, they are strongly inclined to form into a distinct foreign student colony within which it is possible to remain semi-isolated from much of American society.

The author uses the survey ques tionnaire and interviewing as his methods of data collection. Among the interesting findings of the author is the tendency of the Indian student colony to divide into locals, persons oriented inward toward the conserva tion and enhancement of traditional Indian culture even during their sojourn abroad, and cosmopolitans, persons oriented toward the outside Western world. This division between locals and cosmopolitans is found to extend to every phase of life in the colony, to its way of making a living, to its patterns of socialization, and to its distribution of power and influence.