Indians in Mozambique
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (70,000) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Maputo · Island of Mozambique · Inhambane · Nampula | |
| Languages | |
| Portuguese · Hindi · Gujarati | |
| Religion | |
| Hinduism · Islam | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| People of Indian Origin |
Indians in Mozambique form the sixth-largest Indian diaspora community in Africa, according to the statistics of India's Ministry of External Affairs. Roughly 70,000 people of Indian descent reside in Mozambique, as well as 870 Indian expatriates.
India's links with Mozambique reach back over half a millennium. Indian Muslim traders from south India's Malabar region plied the trade routes of the Indian Ocean, bringing them up and down the eastern coast of Africa; Vasco da Gama also found Hindu traders in Mozambique when he paid the first Portuguese visit to ports there in 1499. By the 1800s, Vanika merchants from Diu had settled on the Island of Mozambique; in cooperation with Portuguese shippers, they were active in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Muslim traders from the state of Kutch, closely allied with the Sultan of Oman, began to expand their activities in Southeast Africa in 1840, when the Sultanate relocated its seat of government to Zanzibar; they also bought and sold slaves in Mozambique, but shifted towards ivory under pressure from the British.Cashew nuts were another popular trade item.
More Gujaratis began to flow into Mozambique from South Africa in the latter half of the 19th century, also as petty traders or employees of the large Indian trading firms. Hindus from Diu and Sunni Muslims from Daman also came as masons and construction workers. Migration of all Asians was officially halted in 1899 due to an outbreak of plague, blamed on Indians; even after the relaxation of the restriction in 1907, Asians who sought to migrate to the colony had to pay a disembarkation fee of 3,000 reals at their port of arrival. Yet, with growing white hostility to the Indian presence in South Africa after 1911, more and more Gujaratis who had originally intended to settle in South Africa instead diverted north to Mozambique, especially in the area around Delagoa Bay.
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Wikipedia