The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude, by which more than 1.6 million workers from British India were transported to labour in European colonies, as a substitute for slave labor, following the abolition of the trade in the early 19th century. The system expanded after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, in the French colonies in 1848, and in the Dutch Empire in 1863. British Indian indentureship lasted till the 1920s. This resulted in the development of a large South Asian diaspora in the Caribbean, Natal, East Africa, Réunion, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Fiji, as well as the growth of Indo-Caribbean, Indo-African, Indo-Mauritian, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Malaysian, and Indo-Singaporean populations.
Newly arrived indentured labourers from India in Trinidad
Artistic representation of the first Indian workers seeing the island of Mauritius from a ship in 1834
Indenture Memorial, Kidderpore, Kolkata
Plaques of Indenture Memorial, Kidderpore, Kolkata
The South Asian diaspora, also known as the Desi diaspora, is the group of people whose ancestral origins lie in South Asia, but who live outside the region. There are over 44 million people in this diaspora.
A statue commemorating Janey Tetary, an Indian indentured servant who died in an 1884 uprising in Suriname.
A member of the diaspora playing cricket in Virginia, America.
Deepavali (Diwali) celebrated in Little India, Singapore.
Russell Peters, a famous Indo-Canadian comedian.