Yoga & SpiritualismPart 6 of The Living Gurus. He put a nation on its mat before breakfast and turned pranayama into a mass movement, then parlayed the fame into Patanjali, a consumer-goods giant. Baba Ramdev democratised yoga for hundreds of millions - and became one of India's most divisive figures. The diaspora has watched both halves.
Yoga & SpiritualismPart 5 of The Living Gurus. A gold-medal electronics engineer who traded circuits for the soul, BK Shivani turned the Brahma Kumaris' quiet philosophy into a global television and YouTube phenomenon - and became, for millions of stressed Indians at home and abroad, the steadying voice at the end of a hard day.
Yoga & SpiritualismPart 9 of The Masters Who Crossed the Ocean. A doctor who renounced medicine to write 200 books and train the teachers who carried yoga across the world — the hidden hub of the whole story.
HeritagePart 1 of Mother Tongues. When labourers from a dozen Indian districts were thrown together on Fijian plantations, their languages fused into something new — a tongue that is now the mother language of a people.
EducationPart 1 of The Crossing. For decades the answer was America. In 2026, with US student-visa refusals near record highs, the world's largest cohort of outbound students is redrawing its map.
Yoga & SpiritualismPart 1 of The Masters Who Crossed the Ocean. On 11 September 1893, an unknown Bengali monk walked onto a Chicago stage and began, 'Sisters and brothers of America.' The ovation that followed marked the moment India's spiritual tradition went global.
EducationIn BriefUS F-1 student-visa refusals for Indian applicants rose from 23% in 2015 to about 61% in 2025, even as European applicants faced roughly 9%. The gap is pushing Indian students toward Germany, Ireland and Canada's graduate routes.
CultureThe 2026 Grammy season made it impossible to ignore. Across Best New Artist, Best Pop Duo, Best Global Music Album, Best Global Music Performance, and Best Contemporary Instrumental Album — five different categories — Indian-origin singers and musicians weren't just present. They were the conversation.
CultureIn BriefDirected by Lakshmipriya Devi and backed by Farhan Akhtar, the Manipuri-language film 'Boong' won Best Children's and Family Film at the 2026 EE BAFTA Film Awards — the first Indian film to take the category in the prize's history.
Visas & LawA growing number of diaspora families are quietly moving back. The plane is the easy part. The actual return runs through tax-residency arithmetic, customs paperwork at Nhava Sheva, banking accounts that have to be redesignated on a clock, and a hundred small adjustments nobody warns you about. This is the practical map.
EducationIndian study permits to Canada have collapsed from 188,715 in 2024 to 94,605 in 2025 — a 50 per cent drop in a single year. The approval rate for Indian applicants fell from 81 per cent to 28 per cent. Brampton's agent economy is folding; families in Punjab and Andhra are reassessing; the Canadian dream that Indian families spent two decades constructing is being quietly dismantled. This is what the data shows, and what it does not.
Visas & LawMost Indian estates are run on default settings: no will, no plan, no conversation. For the OCI cardholder thirteen time zones away, that default is the slow tax — months of paperwork, frozen bank accounts, sibling disputes, property that mutates into nobody's. This is the part of the law where preparing in advance costs almost nothing and not preparing costs years.
Visas & LawAn OCI pays Indian tax on Indian-source income — rent, interest, capital gains — under residency rules that tightened again on 1 April 2026. The TDS regime, DTAA relief, TCS on outbound money, and the traps, explained.
EducationFour pathways into India's best universities for diaspora children — JEE Advanced for IIT, the DASA scheme for NITs, NEET for medicine, and direct application for the private liberal arts schools. Plus the ICCR scholarship overlay, the 4 March 2021 OCI cut-off that splits the rules, and the practical pitfalls.
Visas & LawYes — OCIs can buy residential and commercial property in India, but not agricultural land, farmhouses or plantations. What the 2021 notification settled, what the Supreme Court scare actually meant, and the tax position when you sell.
BusinessIn BriefDiaspora remittances to India climbed 14% year-on-year to US$135.46 billion, with the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia driving the growth.
Visas & LawIn BriefFrom 1 May 2026, OCI applications and renewals are paperless. The new fee structure: US$275 from abroad, ₹15,000 in India.
EducationIn BriefNew Zealand's revised 2026 student visa framework adds a 25-hour-per-week work limit, post-study work pathways, and new skilled-migrant entries — positioning the country as a quieter alternative to the harder-to-access US/UK routes.
EducationIn BriefThe number of Indian students in Ireland has climbed from 700 to over 9,000 over the past decade. The 2026 GOI-IES scholarship cycle opened on 29 January.
Visas & LawIn BriefFrom April 2026, every passenger flying to India — including NRIs and OCI cardholders — must complete a Digital e-Arrival Card before boarding. The physical disembarkation card has been discontinued.
CultureThey invest before they turn 22. They run side hustles before they land their first job. They send money home and build portfolios abroad — at the same time. Meet Gen Z NRIs: the most financially ambitious generation India has ever produced. With sources from WEF, SEBI, BCG, and AMFI.
OpinionThe identity question is no longer a crisis — it’s a superpower For decades, young Indians growing up abroad were caught in an exhausting loop: too Indian at school, not Indian enough at home. The cultural tug-of-war that defined their parents’ immigrant experience was supposed to ease with time. For Gen Z, it has done
OpinionThe Edison wedding The Patel wedding I went to in Edison last summer had 1,400 guests, two days of pre-events, a sangeet rehearsed by a choreographer who flies in from Mumbai, and a baraat that got the local police to block off Oak Tree Road for forty minutes. It also had the most Gujarati I […]
CultureNutrition science is universal, but it doesn't land the same on every body. For the Indian diaspora — prone to particular deficiencies and metabolic risks, far from the sun and the kitchen of home — the fine print matters more.