Among the more than 40 mil­lion liv­ing abroad, Hin­dus can be found in large num­bers liv­ing in the Unit­ed States, and the Unit­ed King­dom. The world is in­hab­it­ed with In­di­ans; the on­ly places that they may not be found are the North and South Poles.

It is im­por­tant to note that one out of every six peo­ple of the world is an In­di­an. So it’s no co­in­ci­dence that Hin­dus, who com­prise more than 80 per cent of the In­di­an pop­u­la­tion, are found all over the globe. The mi­gra­tion of how the Hin­dus from the In­di­an sub-con­ti­nent can be found all over the world, is of great in­ter­est.

Move­ments of In­di­an Hin­dus to oth­er parts of the globe can be traced back to the ear­ly cen­turies of the An­no Do­mi­ni [AD], the Gre­go­ri­an cal­en­dar. Even though Hin­dus have been mi­grat­ing in vary­ing num­bers, the bulk of Hin­du mi­gra­tion oc­curred in three stages.

The first stage of mi­gra­tion hap­pened around 100 AD, when the Brah­mins of In­dia mi­grat­ed to South­east Asia, most no­tably, com­pris­ing Cam­bo­dia, Thai­land, In­done­sia and Bali. The Brah­mins were in­vit­ed by the lo­cal rulers to con­se­crate their king­doms, where they in­tro­duced Hin­du deities and scrip­tures.

The sig­nif­i­cance of Brah­ma in the Dhe­va Satram tem­ple in Bangkok and in Thai­land’s roy­al cer­e­monies can still be seen to­day. The an­nu­al per­for­mance of Ra­mayana is an es­tab­lished tra­di­tion in both Thai­land and In­done­sia.

It was dur­ing this pe­ri­od that the Tamil Chet­tiars, a mer­can­tile sea­far­ing com­mu­ni­ty from the Chet­ti­nad re­gion of Tamil Nadu, known for their en­tre­pre­neur­ship skills in trade, bank­ing and mon­ey lend­ing, ex­pand­ed their busi­ness in­to Bur­ma, Malaysia, Mau­ri­tius and sev­er­al oth­er parts of the re­gion.

Their pres­ence over cen­turies played an im­por­tant role, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the de­vel­op­ment of Bur­ma, where they were hailed as the cru­cial providers of fi­nance that turned Bur­ma in­to the “rice-bowl” of the British Em­pire. The Chet­tiars were prop­er­ty own­ers in Bur­ma, but af­ter Bur­ma’s in­de­pen­dence in 1948, they were de­monised as be­ing in­or­di­nate­ly greedy, of­ten cast as preda­tors of the state.

The sec­ond phase of mi­gra­tion orig­i­nat­ed dur­ing the colo­nial regime (1510-1961), main­ly in the form of labour­ers work­ing on the sug­ar, tea and rub­ber plan­ta­tions of oth­er British colonies. Con­tract labour was used for work in Bur­ma, Malaysia and Sri Lan­ka, while in­den­tured labour was em­ployed for work in the West In­di­an colonies, Fi­ji, Mau­ri­tius, and South Africa. Main­ly on sug­ar plan­ta­tions, liv­ing in bar­racks, work­ing hours were a min­i­mum of 45 hours a week, of­ten ex­tend­ing to 54 hours week­ly, six nine-hour days. There was no wage in­crease for longer hours dur­ing the peak agri­cul­tur­al sea­son, crop time. Sun­days were des­ig­nat­ed as a hol­i­day.

In Trinidad, In­di­ans did well in the eco­nom­ic in­dus­try and en­tre­pre­neur­ial en­ter­pris­es, al­though the minute pop­u­la­tion of Cau­casian con­tin­ues to con­trol the banks and fi­nan­cial ser­vices.

The ear­ly part of the 20th cen­tu­ry wit­nessed the mi­gra­tion of Gu­jaratis and Pun­jabis to the emerg­ing economies of Kenya, Ugan­da, Tan­za­nia and Malawi. Al­though the In­di­ans es­tab­lished them­selves in busi­ness and trade, they were soon seen as mar­gin­al­is­ing the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion and en­hanc­ing their own in­ter­ests.

In Ugan­da, where In­di­ans were first brought by the British to work on the rail­way lines, they were ac­cused of tak­ing the liveli­hoods away from the black peo­ple and not con­tribut­ing to the na­tion­al trea­sury. In­di­ans were op­pressed dur­ing the bru­tal regime of Ugan­da’s Idi Amin.

In Kenya, the 1967 Im­mi­gra­tion Act made life dif­fi­cult for the In­di­an British pass­port hold­ers who vol­un­tar­i­ly left, rather than be ex­pelled.

The third stage of mi­gra­tion com­menced af­ter World War II and brought Hin­dus first to Britain, where they worked in the labour-short­aged British in­dus­tries. They were soon joined by doc­tors, busi­ness­men and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als.

In the Unit­ed States, the mi­gra­tion of pro­fes­sion­als be­gan in the lat­ter half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, which was fol­lowed by waves of mi­gra­tion of soft­ware pro­fes­sion­als. Caribbean Hin­dus mov­ing to Mi­a­mi,

Lon­don, New York, Toron­to and Kenyan and Ugan­dan Hin­dus moved to Britain, ow­ing to poli­cies that favoured in­dige­nous pop­u­la­tions.

In the Unit­ed States, In­di­ans have done par­tic­u­lar­ly well and their af­flu­ence is pro­nounced. Al­though In­di­ans com­prise less than 0.5 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, no group has a high­er per capi­ta in­come.

It was in the Unit­ed States that In­di­ans be­came tar­gets of racial at­tacks for the first time.

The Hin­du woman, clad in a sari and wear­ing a bin­di on her fore­head, was the fo­cus of at­tack by the so-called “dot-busters,” a New Jer­sey-based gang of white teenagers who were al­ready re­spon­si­ble for sev­er­al vi­o­lent crimes against In­di­ans.

De­spite be­ing away from In­dia, the an­ces­tral home, gen­er­a­tions of Hin­dus still main­tain their link through cul­ture, movies, crick­et, mar­riages and food.