Indo-Caribbean people or Indian-Caribbean people are people in the Caribbean who trace their ancestry to the Indian subcontinent. They are descendants of the Jahaji indentured laborers from British India, who were brought by the British, Dutch, and French during the colonial era from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. A minority of them are descendants from people who immigrated as entrepreneurs, businesspeople, merchants, engineers, doctors, religious leaders, students, and other professional occupations beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to the present.
Indo-Caribbean people largely trace their ancestry back to the Bhojpur and Awadh regions of the Hindi Belt in North India, in the present-day states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Jharkhand, with a significant minority coming from the Madras Presidency, especially present-day Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Other notable regions of origin include Bengal, Western Uttar Pradesh, Mithila, Magadh, Chota Nagpur, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Pashtunistan, Punjab, and Kashmir.[15][16] Most Indians in the French West Indies of Martinique and Guadeloupe are of South Indian Tamil and Telugu origin and Indians in Barbados are mostly of Bengali and Gujarati origin.[17] Later immigrants to the Caribbean came from Sindh, Kutch, Gujarat, Punjab, Bengal, Maharashtra, South India, and other parts of South Asia as free immigrants.[18]
Most Indo-Caribbean people live in the English-speaking Caribbean nations of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and Guyana, the Dutch-speaking Suriname and the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana, with smaller numbers in other Caribbean countries including Belize and the Lesser Antilles. Large Indo-Caribbean immigrant populations are found in North America and Europe, specifically in the United States, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United Kingdom. These countries have some of the largest Indo-Caribbean populations in the world, and Indo-Caribbeans in these countries have largely congregated in urban areas such as New York City, Amsterdam, Toronto, Rotterdam, London, Miami/Fort Lauderdale/West Palm Beach, Orlando/Ocala, Houston, Birmingham, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Montreal, Schenectady/Albany, Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Manchester, and Washington D.C..
Indo-Caribbean people may also be referred to as Caribbean Indians, East Indian West Indians,[a] Caribbean Hindustanis, South Asian Caribbean people,[26] or Caribbean Desis,[27] while first-generation Indo-Caribbean people were called Girmitya, Desi, Hindustani, Kantraki, Mulki (m.) / Mulkin (f.),[28] or Jahaji (m.) / Jahajin (f.). Coolie, meaning hired laborer, was used in the plantation society of the late 19th to early 20th century, however in the present-day it is considered a derogatory way to refer to Indo-Caribbean people and is considered a pejorative.[29]
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