South Indians in Fiji

The South Indians in Fiji are mainly descendents of the 15,132 indentured labourers who arrived in Fiji between 1903 and 1916. This represents about 25% out of a total of 60,965 indentured labourers who arrived in Fiji between 1879 and 1916. They embarked on ships from Madras and were mainly recruited in the districts of North Arcot, Madras, Krishna, Godavari, Visakhapatnam, Tanjore, Malabar and Coimbatore. More than half of the recruits from South India were recruited from North Arcot and Madras, but most of those recruited in Madras were originally from North Arcot and Chingleput.

The language spoken by the South Indian immigrant was only included in the emigration passes issued in 1903. Of the 589 labourers recruited in South India in 1903, the number of people speaking each language is shown below.

In later years more Telugu than Tamil speakers came from South India, as can be seen from subsequent census figures. According to the 1956 census, the number of households speaking each language was as follows:

Although by 1956 Hindustani (Fiji Hindi) was being used in most Fiji households, the numbers still using South Indian languages indicate that there were twice as many Teluguas Tamils, and Malayalam was the third most common South Indian language. From 1929 to 1963, the ability to read and write in Tamil or Telugu was accepted as literacy qualification to be a voter for elections to the Legislative Council. In 2005, it was revealed that in the 20 primary schools managed by TISI, out of the 4940 students, 1765 took Tamil classes and there were only 489 learning Telugu.

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