There are now more than 20 million people who are either Indian citizens or of Indian origin in more than 40 countries throughout the world. This Atlas Update looks specifically at this group within the context of other population movements.

The map on page 200 of the Heinemann Atlas 3^rd edn shows some movements of Indians to the Middle East and to regions southeast of India. On a world scale, though, population movements into and out of India are not particularly large.

Reasons for population movements

Throughout history, people have moved from their homelands to other parts of the world. In the 19^th and early 20^th century, population movements were linked to:

• colonisation (for example, people moved from the United Kingdom to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and other colonial possessions) and
• economic change (for example, people moved from rural to urban areas such as London, Manchester, Paris, New York and Chicago.

Push and pull factors

Movements of people are often described in terms of push and pull factors: features that push people out of their homelands and features that pull people towards other locations. Page 204 of the Heinemann Atlas 3^rd edn shows how these factors work for rural to urban migration.

What is a ‘diaspora’?

The term diaspora is frequently used to describe the distribution of people in areas wider than the one they originally came from. The Indian diaspora can be seen in Table 1, below.

Table 1: The distribution of people with an Indian origin

Country, region	Estimated number 1998–2000
Middle East	3 800 000
Sri Lanka	3 650 000
United States	3 200 000
Malaysia	1 600 000
South Africa	1 100 000
Tanzania	1 000 000
United Kingdom	944 000
Burma	920 000
Mauritius	660 000
Trinidad and Tobago	520 000
Guyana	375 000
Fiji	362 000
Singapore	320 000
Kenya	254 000
Surinam	150 000
Jamaica	87 525

# Smaller groups of people of Indian origin are found in Belize, Canada, Maldives, Nepal, New Zealand and Zambia.

# Some of the people included as ‘Indian origin’ in the above table include communities that formed before Indian and Pakistan became independent from the United Kingdom in 1947.

Development of the Indian diaspora

The Indian diaspora has developed in distinct stages.

Stage 1: pre-colonial

Trading contacts develop with, and small colonies establish themselves in, east Africa and South-east Asia.

Stage 2: colonial

This particularly covers the 19^th and early decades of the 20^th century. This stage was far larger and more dispersed than the first stage. Indian labourers were indentured to other parts of the British empire.

Indenture has been described as one step removed from slavery. Indentured labour provided British enterprise with the workers needed for its colonies. For example, indentured Indian labour was used for sugar cane farming in the Caribbean and the South Pacific, railway building projects in eastern Africa and plantations in Malaya. Guyana in northern South America (Heinemann Atlas 3^rd edn, page 175) received around 250 000 indentured labourers, many of whom later brought their families to the South American colony. Today over half of Guyana’s population is of Indian origin.

Indentured labourers frequently remained in their new homeland remaining as labourers or becoming traders or low-skilled administrators. By 1917, when the practice of indentured labour was ending, there were approximately 1.5 million indentured Indian labourers working overseas.

Stage 3: independence

A third stage in the development of the Indian diaspora begins with an independent India in 1947. Several distinctive groups arose during this period.

• Anglo-Indians: Many British people with Indian partners and their children) emigrated to the United Kingdom, with smaller numbers going to Australia and Canada.

• Indian labourers: In the 1960s and 1970s, Indian labourers were imported to the United Kingdom, Germany and the Middle East. In the Middle East they worked largely on infrastructure projects such as port and highway construction in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. Many people of Indian origin still work in the Middle East: 3 800 000 in 1999–2000.

• A professional elite: An additional and very distinctive group is that of a professional elite, which has emigrated mostly to the United States and the United Kingdom, with smaller numbers going to Australia, South-east Asia and the Middle East.
  
  In the United States today this group is very significant. While people of Indian origin make up less than 0.5 per cent of the total United States’ population they are approximately 5 per cent of that country’s scientists, engineers and software specialists. This group earns an average of ten times the amount that Indian labourers earn in Middle East construction work. The group is thus a tribute to the skills and training in India but at the same time a reflection on the home country’s ability to hold and employ its skilled workers.

Stage 4: movement in areas outside India

This movement is not one from India but from one part of the diaspora to either another or to a newer location. Two examples are well documented.

• In 1972, Uganda’s dictator Idi Amin ordered 75 000 Ugandan Asians out of the nation. Most of these people were of Indian origin and were successful traders, bankers and administrators or labourers. Around 27 000 emigrated to the United Kingdom, while another 6100 went to Canada. Some even emigrated to India despite never having lived there previously.

• A second example centres on Fiji. By the 1970s, native Fijians had lost their majority to people of Indian origin – mostly descendants of farm workers brought in by the British as indentured labour.
  
  In 1987 the first Indian-backed coalition was elected to government, raising tension between the ethnic Indian and ethnic Fijian populations. Subsequent events have ensured ethnic Fijian political dominance. Many Indo-Fijians have left the country of their birth, some going to India, others to New Zealand and to Australia. Today, Indo-Fijians make up around 44 per cent of the total Fijian population.

Indian-born Australian residents

According to the 2001 national Census of Population and Housing, Australia had 95 452 people born in India as residents. They make up the fourth largest overseas-born Asian group in Australia and the ninth largest overseas group overall.

These people, together with any of their Australian-born children, are a growing proportion of Australia’s multicultural mix. Melbourne and Sydney each have around 50 000 people of Indian origin. Around Woolgoolga (Heinemann Atlas 3^rd edn, page 75, map reference H4) has a prominent Indian population of Sikhs. This group has developed since the 1930s in this banana growing region. Woolgoolga has a number of Sikh temples as well as many Indian shops and services.

Remittances

People who leave their homelands for another destination, and their descendants, may not always remain in the second country. They may not always return to their point of family origins. This is the case with all population groups, including non-resident Indians.

One thing that frequently returns to the homeland with any population group is money.

Money sent home by workers employed abroad is a called a remittance. In 1990, remittances from non-resident Indians totalled US$3.6 billion. By 1999–2000 they were US$14.4 billion – a very welcome contribution to India’s export earnings. Other links such as education opportunities, religion, language and family ties help maintain the identity of Indian communities around the world.