The Indian Diaspora: The "Other" Door of No Return
/The term "Indian diaspora" refers to all persons of Indian descent living outside India, as long as they preserve some major Indian ethnocultural characteristics. Only nationals of Pakistan and Bangladesh are excluded from this term since those countries were part of the larger British India before 1947 and thus constitute a special case.
India has one of the world's most diverse and complex migration histories. Since the 19th century, ethnic Indians have established communities on every continent as well as on islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific and Indian oceans.
Following the abolition of slavery, first by the British in 1833 and subsequently by other colonial powers such as France, the Netherlands, and Portugal, the colonies urgently needed manpower, particularly on sugar and rubber plantations. To meet this demand, the British established an organized system of temporary labor migration from the Indian subcontinent. On the labor-supply side of the equation, poverty among the South Asian peasantry accounted for the principal reason to leave the subcontinent.
Under colonial rule, India’s population provided the British Empire with a ready source of cheap and mobile laborers. Many Indians agreed to become indentured laborers to escape the widespread poverty and famine in the 19th century. Some traveled alone; others brought their families to settle in the colonies they worked in. The demand for Indian indentured laborers increased dramatically in 1834, following year after the abolition of slavery. They were sent, sometimes in large numbers, to plantation colonies producing high value crops such as sugar in Africa and the Caribbean.
Indo-Caribbeans:
The first Indians to inaugurate the Indo-Caribbean identity were brought from Calcutta to Guyana as indentured laborers subsequent to the official abolition of slavery in 1838, with many belonging to some of the lowest designations of the Indian social system. the abolition of slavery in the British Empire led to the import of exploited South Asian indentured workers in the Caribbean.
Our history books equip us with the term “recruitment” for characterizing the colonial transfer of Indians to the British West Indies, however, it is noteworthy to highlight that many Indians were “recruited” by means such as kidnapping or being placed into forced detention. These were practices that resulted from the realization of the desperate need to replace lost slave labor in an expedient manner subsequent to the abolition of slavery.
Workers, mostly from East India, were brought to the Caribbean to replace African slaves on British plantations across what was then the West Indies. In 1838, the first ships arrived in Guyana. Between 1838 to 1917, half a million Indians came and settled across the Caribbean.
There are several different Indian arrival days across the Caribbean. This is because after the first two ships arrived in Guyana in 1838, there had been complaints that the first "export" of Indians had not been treated well. Upon their arrival in Guyana, the Indians were met with great hostility from the existing working class of newly freed slaves in Guyana, and women being used a sex slaves to their European managers. This led to a delay in the migration in 1838.
When conditions were improved by 1845, the next and larger scale of the export of Indians took place to Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean. The first Indian migrants did not arrive in Suriname until 1873.
Indo-Africans:
India has more than a three thousand year history of cultural and commercial relations with Africa. Commercial relations have a longer history than cultural contacts. Indian sources indicate that there were contacts and trade relations between Dravidians and Babylonians as early as the seventh century B.C. On their way to Mesopotamia, Indian merchants and sailors would have certainly visited Southern Arabia, which is situated on the maritime route and the Eastern part of Horn of Africa- the Somali peninsula.
Indo-Africans trace their ancestry primarily from the East African coast from Sudan, Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) to Mozambique, but some came from as far off as South Africa and even Nigeria. Many of the Indo-Africans who arrived from eastern Africa came as sailors and traders engaged in the vibrant Indian ocean trade and stayed on in India, usually around the main ports, from Kerala in the south to Gujarat in the north. The monsoon winds that blew across the Indian ocean powered an extensive trade system that shipped spices from Kerala through Northeast Africa and on to Rome and other parts of the European continent since before the time of Christ.
Ivory, gold and other valuables from Zimbabwe and the Congo found their way to the East African coast to areas such as Kilwa, Mombasa and Zanzibar from where they were further shipped across the Indian Ocean and on to India, Southeast Asia, China and even Japan. The ‘trade diaspora’ was unique as it consisted largely of ‘temporary’ and ‘circular’ migration.
The second wave of migration into Africa by Indians came as a result of colonization. Major clusters of Indians were taken as indentured laborers across colonial empires in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Indentured Indian laborers replaced freed slaves in plantation economies. The stark contrast between the first trade wave was that migration during colonial rule was forced, not voluntary. It is worth noting that some Indians migrated as clerks and teachers to serve colonial governments overseas. This expanded colonial rule.
In the midst of colonization, the sub-continent India and large masses of Africa were incorporated into the British Empire such as Sierra Leone and the most common example, South Africa. Indentured labor came as the result of bondage of debt. Through this, European imperialists facilitated the transport of millions of Indians into the African continent where they served as laborers for sugar plantations.
Indo-Europeans:
Indo-Europeans (IE) is the general name for the people speaking an Indo-European language. They are (linguistic) descendants of the people of the Yamnaya culture (c.3600-2300 BCE) in Ukraine and southern Russia, the most widely ranging ethnic group in ancient times. The majority (approximately ¾) of the countries of the world have an Indo-European language as the sole or official language. This phenomenon is due either to the Indo-European language being the indigenous language of the country or to the “legacy” of colonialism.
There are various theories about the precise location of their original homeland. A personal learning is for the most probable theory, that they were originally located somewhere on the northern edge of the Caucasus Mountains. These form a range of peaks that sits between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and which today is largely within the borders of Georgia and the southern tip of Russia. The IEs then expanded out from there, most of them going north into the steppes.
Branches of Indo-European Languages
The Indo-European languages have a large number of branches: Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Armenian, Tocharian, Balto-Slavic and Albanian.
Branch: Anatolian
Countries: Asian portion of Turkey, some areas in northern Syria
Languages: Hittite, Luvian, Palaic, Lycian, and Lydian
Fun Fact: Oldest surviving language of Indo-European; Currently extinct
Branch: Indo-Iranian (Indic and Iranian)
Countries: India, Pakistan, Iran, and its vicinity and also in areas from the Black Sea to western China
Languages: Sanskrit, Vedic Sanskrit, Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, and Bengali (Indic); Old Avestan, Gathic Avestan, Old Persian, Farsi (modern Persian), Pashto, and Kurdish (Iranian).
Fun Fact: What in the past were called Aryans are now known as Indo-Iranians and Indo-Aryans - the original term has bad connotations due to its use by the Nazis. They appear to have been the group that remained where they were in the old homeland, in the steppes to the north of the Caucasus.
Branch: Greek
Countries: Southern end of the Balkans, the Peloponnese peninsula, and the Aegean Sea and its vicinity
Languages: Mycenaean, Attic (Athens)
Fun Fact: Because of Athens cultural supremacy in the 5th century BCE, it was the Athens dialect, called Attic, the one that became the standard literary language during the Classical period (480-323 BCE). Therefore, the most famous Greek poetry and prose written in Classical times were written in Attic: Aristophanes, Aristotle, Euripides, and Plato are just a few examples of authors who wrote in Attic.
Branch: Italic
Countries: Italian peninsula
Languages: Latin, Classical Latin, Faliscan, Sabellic, Umbrian, South Picene, and Oscan
Fun Fact: Rome was responsible for the growth of Latin in ancient times through its most famous Classical Latin works of Roman authors like Ovid, Cicero, Seneca, Pliny, and Marcus Aurelius.
Branch: Celtic (Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic)
Countries: Southern Germany, Austria, Western Czech Republic in almost all directions, France, Belgium, Spain, the British Isles, Northern Italy, the Balkans and beyond
Languages: Gaulish, Latin (Continental); Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Breton (Insular)
Fun Fact: Adopted Latin once conquered by the Romans.
Branch: Germanic (East Germanic, currently extinct; North Germanic, West Germanic)
Countries: Southern Scandinavia to the coast of the North Baltic Sea
Languages: (East extinct); Old Norse, Old Icelandic, Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish (North); Old English, Old Saxon, Old High German, Dutch, English, Frisian, and Yiddish (West)
Fun Fact: Germanic language borrowed several terms from Finnish speakers and Balto-Slavic tribes.
Branch: Armenian
Country: Turkey
Language: Persian
Fun Fact: The Persian domination had a strong linguistic impact on Armenian, which mislead many scholars in the past to believe that Armenian actually belonged to the Iranian group.
Branch: Tocharian
Countries: Taklamakan Desert, western China
Languages: Tocharian A (religious or poetic language) and Tocharian B (administrative)
Fun Fact: Physical analysis and genetic evidence have revealed resemblances with the inhabitants of western Eurasia.
Branch: Balto-Slavic (Baltic and Slavic)
Countries: Western Poland, Belarus, small region along the Baltic Sea, Greece and the Balkans
Languages: Latvian and Lithuanian (Baltic); Bulgarian, Czech, Croatian, Polish, Serbian, Slovak, Russian (Slavic)
Fun Fact: Slavs were once located further to the east, in or around Iranian territory, since many Iranian words were borrowed into pre-Slavic at an early stage. Later on, as they moved westward, they came into contact with German tribes and again borrowed several additional terms.
Branch: Albanian
Countries: Former Yugoslavia, Southern Italy, Greece and the Republic of Macedonia
Languages: Illyrian, Albanian
Fun Fact: Albanian is a modern descendant of Illyrian, a language which was widely spoken in the region during classical times
Indian Australians:
Indian Australians are Australians of Indian descent or heritage. This includes both those who are Australian by birth, and those born in India or elsewhere in the Indian diaspora.
Indian immigration from British India to Australia began early in the history of Australian colonies. The first Indians arrived in Australia with the British settlers who had been living in India. The people of the first British fleet to establish a new colony, which landed in early 1788, included seamen, marines and their families, government officials, and a large number of convicts, including women and children. All had been tried and convicted in Great Britain and almost all of them in England. Later on, Indian crews from Bay of Bengal came to Australia on trading ships.
The lack of manual laborers from the convict assignment system led to an increased demand for foreign labor, which was partly filled by the arrival of Indians who came from an agrarian background in India, and therefore fulfilled their tasks as farm laborers on cane fields and shepherds on sheep stations.
