The emigration of people from
India has been recorded as starting
over 2,500 years ago when adventurers
travelled by sailboat to the
shores of Africa, South East
Asia and the Far East. The voyagers
negotiated the ocean waters
to venture to Java, Sumatra,
Cambodia, Vietnam, Bali and
the Philippines tackling the
monsoon winds and taking with
them to their new lands, a rich
contribution of culture, calligraphy,
methods of cultivation, handicrafts
and new industries, all in the
calmness and peace of the time.
Later the abolition of slavery
prompted the occupying European
countries of England, Holland,
France, Portugal and Spain with
their accompanying military
forces, to move Indian labour
to the sugar plantations of
Jamaica, South Africa and Mauritius,
and builders of the Kenya Railway
were sourced from the Punjab.
Farmers were needed in Canada
and were taken there from the
Punjab around the 1930s.
Further along history Britain
and the US needed factory workers
and skilled professionals and
admitted Indians in substantial
numbers from the 1960s onwards.
Most recently at the end of
the twentieth century Indian
info tech workers went over
to fix the dreaded Millennium
Bug in computer systems, followed
by thousands of IT professionals.
This is the new generation of
the Indian diaspora who continue
to maintain their links with
India through their way of life,
culture, food and religions.
Source: NRI-worldwide.com
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