By region
South Africa, the East and Southern African trading communities, and Mauritius.
Scholars from India, Mauritius and the Netherlands convene online, 10–12 September 2026, for an international symposium on India's indentured migration — under a banner they call 'Girmitiyalogy: Text, Theory and Literature.' What the field is, and how to attend.
A new Hindi travelogue by the noted writer Devendra Choubey — ‘Yah, Vah Desh To Nahin: Mauritius, a social journey’ (Aadhar Prakashan, 2026) — reads the island not through its temples and festivals but through the freedom struggle of its African slaves and Indian indentured labourers. A book note, in English and Hindi.
They came in 1860 to cut sugar in Natal and stayed to become 1.7 million — the community that shaped Gandhi, filled Durban, and helped bring apartheid down. The 165-year story of South Africa's Indians.
In August 1972 Idi Amin gave Uganda's South Asians 90 days to leave. Some 80,000 people, many holding British passports, scattered to Leicester, Toronto and beyond — and rebuilt. The expulsion and its long afterlife.
Bhojpuri crossed the ocean with Mauritius's indentured labourers and became the island's Indian lingua franca. Two centuries later, it is fading — and being fought for.
The first indentured Indians reached Natal in 1860. The community they built gave the world, among others, a young lawyer named Gandhi — and made Durban the largest Indian city outside India.
Part 1 of Mother Tongues. When labourers from a dozen Indian districts were thrown together on Fijian plantations, their languages fused into something new — a tongue that is now the mother language of a people.
Part 1 of Children of the Girmit. Nearly 700,000 indentured Indians passed through a single stone depot in Port Louis — and their descendants became the majority, and the rulers, of an Indian Ocean nation.
Part 1 of The Diaspora Plate. A dish nobody in India had quite eaten became, in the hands of Bangladeshi cooks in Britain, the country's unofficial national meal — and a perfect parable of how diaspora food is made.
Part 1 of Power Abroad. The grandson of Punjabi migrants became the United Kingdom's first British Indian prime minister — and lit Diwali lamps on the steps of Downing Street.
The 2026 Grammy season made it impossible to ignore. Across Best New Artist, Best Pop Duo, Best Global Music Album, Best Global Music Performance, and Best Contemporary Instrumental Album — five different categories — Indian-origin singers and musicians weren't just present. They were the conversation.
External Affairs Minister Jaishankar signed an archival cooperation agreement with Trinidad and Tobago to help members of the Indo-Caribbean diaspora trace their ancestral roots. The Government of India is creating a comprehensive global Girmitiya database.
The Government of India has extended Overseas Citizen of India eligibility to the sixth generation of Indian-origin diaspora in Trinidad and Tobago — recognising the descendants of indentured Girmitiya labourers who arrived in 1845. A historic outreach with implications for other long-tail diaspora communities.
An OCI pays Indian tax on Indian-source income — rent, interest, capital gains — under residency rules that tightened again on 1 April 2026. The TDS regime, DTAA relief, TCS on outbound money, and the traps, explained.
Four pathways into India's best universities for diaspora children — JEE Advanced for IIT, the DASA scheme for NITs, NEET for medicine, and direct application for the private liberal arts schools. Plus the ICCR scholarship overlay, the 4 March 2021 OCI cut-off that splits the rules, and the practical pitfalls.
What the OCI actually is The Overseas Citizen of India card, in plain language, is a lifetime visa to India that comes with most — but not all — of the practical rights of Indian citizenship. It is a document, not a status. It does not make you a citizen of India. India does not permit […]
