The “Indians” include people, who are (descendants of) those who, since the second half of the nineteenth century, migrated from French-British India to then-Indochina- Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Although the Indians have been in Vietnam for generations and have participated in economic and political revolutions of Vietnam, they have been perceived by ethnic Vietnamese as "kẻ hút máu" [bloodsucking beings] -- unwelcome migrants who are materialistic, exploitative and most of all foreign. Many Indians have become Vietnamese citizens; arguably, they do not belong to any categorized ethnic groups of Vietnam.

This dissertation assumes the virtual invisibility of the Indians in Vietnamese writing and society originates in the way Vietnamese nation-makers have made these persons visible in the wake of the formulaic metaphor "bloodsucking Indians" and the quest for national sovereignty and prosperity since the colonial time. The metaphor refers to the imagined association of the Indians with colonialism and capitalism – identified as "non-socialist" and "non-hegemonic" state structures of Vietnam. The dissertation suggests a complex view on colonial legacies in Vietnam: Vietnamese nation-makers retain the metaphor in attempts to retain the overriding socialist and independent goal of historically differing Vietnamese nationalisms and the concurrent invisibility of the Indians; as such, the remains of colonial knowledge are the strategic choice of Vietnamese nation-makers. Moreover, in making visible the Indians by presenting how they have been made invisible, the dissertation critically addresses current debates about postcolonial scholarship and the Others' visibility and audibility and about complex associations of literary studies, diaspora studies and ethnic studies with nationalism.

The choice of Vietnamese writing as the primary source of this dissertation stems from the scholarship of the performativity of language and the Vietnamese traditional belief in writing as a sharp weapon in national and class struggles. Interview is also a source essential in examining material impacts of the metaphor of bloodsucking Indians in Vietnamese nation-building. The dissertation develops into seven chapters, analytically centering on the formation and continuation of metaphoric associations of the Indians with capitalism and colonialism, the main causes of the virtual invisibility of these people in Vietnamese writing and society.

This thesis aims to explore the question of why Tagore's reception in Vietnam during the French colonial period was excluded and then selectively included into official Vietnamese cultural life today, inspired by the idea that power and knowledge are closely interconnected, so aptly summarized in Foucault's phrase "all will to truth is already a will to power" (in Merquior, 209). By way of a critical reading of these receptions (articles, news, photos and literary writings) in primary sources including newspapers, books and journals produced during the French colonial period (1885- 1943), I will argue that they are manifestations of the colonial knowledge of "Annam-ness" produced by the French regime in order to gain control over Annam.

This thesis re-imagines the myth of Tagore in socialist cultural products by bringing to the table its revised origins in colonial period. The return of such colonial knowledge in current literary and political life, which is for the very different purpose of transnational collaborations, as Foucault says, "make[s] a mockery of the idea of freedom" (in Merquior 117). The question is not about the individual freedom but about those who govern statements/knowledge and in what way they do this to constitute current politically acceptable propositions. Not many Vietnamese people know that the current knowledge of Tagore, brought up in connection with globalization, was neither a change of content nor a refutation of the legacy of colonial knowledge (cf. Merquior 112). Rather, the current appreciation of Tagore is the revision of the colonial knowledge of Tagore; the essence of the later has been retained, but terms are modified in accordance with the current discourse of globalization. The recollection of the knowledge of Orientalist Romanticism in Vietnamese textbooks and newspapers and in daily life is indicative of the "technology of power" of the socialist regime. The thesis is a postcolonial case study of colonial knowledge in Vietnam.