The Girmitiyas: How Indian Laborers Shaped Modern Fiji

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]May 14th 1879 Leonidas a labor transport vessel would arrive at Levuka in Fizzy carrying around 400 odd indentured labor from Kolkata.

[00:00:14]Over the next 37 years around 60,000 Indians would arrive here most of mostly from Purwanchel to work on Fiji's massive sugar cane plantations maintained by the British and create an Indian diaspora here.

[00:00:30]These workers were called as a grammatias after the name of the contract that required them to work for 5 years in fizzy. Many of them lived in appalling conditions in holes and were literal slaves. However, with public outrage of the contract system, it was ended by the British in 1920 and many were given the option to go back to India or stay. Most of them being too poor to afford the return journey back home stayed back and took to farming sugar cane or cattle raring or setting up in small businesses. In a way this resulted in the emergence of the fizzy Indian with people from all cast working together. The cast system here was more or less done away with and also resulted in the development of fizzy hindi a mix of bospuri mahi and English.

[00:01:15]The Indian diaspora and fizzy usually calls themselves as fizzy Indian or Indo-ysian to distinguish themselves from the native physians. While Badri Maharaj was appointed as the first Indian-born governor in 1916, it was a lawyer Manilal Mandal who led the campaign for better treatment to Indian diaspora there in Physi. Sadhu Vasist Money led the estation for better pay for the workers on Indian sugar plantations in 1920 and Vishnu James Ramchandra Ra and Permanan Singh were the first Indians to be elected to legislative counciling council.

[00:01:46]Most of the Indians in Fiji are concentrated in the sugar belt and urban areas on the north and west coast.

[00:01:52]Around 76% of the indu Indians here are Hindu who are split in two groups. One is the Arya samais who advocated radical reforms and did not believe in rituals.

[00:02:01]Another was the more conservative sanatan dharma. However, most Hindus adopted practices of both the groups and they celebrated the festivals like Ram Nami, Holi, Diwali while Diwali and there are many temples and one of the more famous temples is the Sivas Subramanya temple in the town of Nadi built by the Indian Sanmarka Aikisam.

[00:02:22]Some of the famous fizzy Indians include Gulfur Vijay Singh author Nali Singh and they're spread all around the world including in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK and US. If you have enjoyed this small talk on the fizzy Indians, do subscribe to the channel, share and like this video. Namaste. This is me Ratnaka logging off for another episode of history under your