Pacific’s vanishing migration

Inevitable disappearance of Fiji's Indians

As Fiji marked its 54th year of independence this month, something curious is happening, mostly unnoticed - Indo-Fijians have all but faded away as a distinct group.

Clues to Schrödinger's cat-like disappearance are somewhat vague, as when a Fiji Government statement announces new appointments to various jobs. Only the clued-in will note the absence of Fiji Indians. It’s not to say that this is happening by official fiat, but the effect is the same; Indo-Fijians are going. Most of them have gone to Aotearoa, United States and Canada where they have the curious status of being ‘not quite Indian’. The effect of the official confusion is that within a generation, Indo-Fijian migrants simply become Indian. In places like New Zealand, where migration from India has increased sharply, the Fiji Indians, with their own Hindi form of language, are disappearing.

‘Basically you have in Fiji a slice of what is India before India became India…. We are Indians in the truest sense, Indians from the 1850s anyway….’

Indian women in Suva, 1949. National Archives of Fiji.