Indo-Fijians

Indo-Fijians
फ़िजी के हिंदुस्तानी
Fiji India
Fiji ethnic map (2017 census) Orange is for Indo-Fijian
Total population
460,000
37.6% of the population of Fiji (2007)
Regions with significant populations
 Fiji313,798 (2007 census)[1]
 Australia61,748 (2016 census)[2]
 New Zealand38,310 (2022 census)[3]
 United States30,890 (2000 figure)[4]
 Canada24,665 (2016 census)[5]
Languages
Fiji Hindi • English • Pidgin Fijian • Fijian Bau • Others
Religion
Majority: Hinduism (76.7%)
Minority: Islam (15.9%), Sikhism (0.9%), Christianity (6.1%), others (0.4%)[6]
Related ethnic groups
Indo-Caribbeans, Indians in South Africa, Indo-Mauritians, Indo-Guyanese, Indo-Surinamese, Indo-Jamaicans, Indo-Trinidadian and Tobagonian, Indian Singaporeans, Malaysian Indians, Indian people, Indian diaspora

Indo-Fijians (Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी के हिंदुस्तानी), also known as Indian Fijians (also colloquially known as "Findians" or "Findus"), are Fijian citizens of South Asian descent, and include people who trace their ancestry to various regions of the Indian subcontinent.[7] Although Indo-Fijians constituted a majority of Fiji's population from 1956 through the late 1980s, discrimination and the resulting brain drain resulted in them numbering 313,798 (37.6%) (2007 census) out of a total of 827,900 people living in Fiji as of 2007.[8]

Although they hailed from various regions in the subcontinent, the vast majority of Indo-Fijians trace their origins to the Awadh and Bhojpur regions of the Hindi Belt in northern India.[9] Indians in Fiji speak Fiji Hindi also known as ‘Fiji Baat’ which is based on the Awadhi dialect with major influence from Bhojpuri. It is a koiné language with its own grammatical features, distinct to the Modern Standard Hindi spoken in India.[10] The major home districts of Fiji's North Indian labourers were Basti, Gonda, Lucknow, Kanpur, Faizabad, Ballia, Ghazipur, Gorakhpur, Sultanpur, Siwan, Shahabad, Saran, and Azamgarh, in the present-day Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh and the present-day Bhojpur region of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand.[11] Others (in a smaller quantity) originated in Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and the Telugu regions. A small contingent of indentured labourers came from Afghanistan and Nepal. A small amount of free immigrants also came from Gujarat and Punjab.[12] Many of the Muslim Indo-Fijians also came from Sindh and various other parts of South Asia. Fiji's British colonial rulers brought South Asian people to the Colony of Fiji as indentured labourers between 1879 and 1916 to work on Fiji's sugar-cane plantations.

Mahendra Chaudhry became Fiji's first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister on 19 May 1999.

  1. ^ Fiji Islands Bureau of Statistics Archived 9 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ "Australian demographic statistics" (PDF).
  3. ^ Birthplace and people born overseas Archived 1 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ "People born in Fiji" (PDF).
  5. ^ "2016 Canadian census". 27 October 2017.
  6. ^ "Pacific Regional Statistics - Secretariat of the Pacific Community". www.spc.int.
  7. ^ Girmit by Suresh Prasad
  8. ^ "Fiji population up 50,000 in 10 yrs". Fijilive. 31 October 2007. Retrieved 4 November 2007.
  9. ^ Walker, Anthony R. (2005). "Indians in Fiji". Encyclopedia of Diasporas. pp. 836–850. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-29904-4_86. ISBN 978-0-306-48321-9.
  10. ^ "Fiji Hindi". Lonweb.org. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  11. ^ "The forgotten story of India's colonial slave workers who began leaving home 180 years ago". 3 November 2014.
  12. ^ Siteri Sauvakacolo (27 April 2021). "The arrival and rise of Sikhs in Fiji". The Fiji Times. Retrieved 28 May 2022.