Hinduism in New Caledonia
Encyclopedia
Hinduism originally came to New Caledonia
New Caledonia
New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...

with India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

ns who worked as indentured servants of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an settlers of the island. There are about 500 New Caledonians of Indian Tamil
Tamil people
Tamil people , also called Tamils or Tamilians, are an ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, India and the north-eastern region of Sri Lanka. Historic and post 15th century emigrant communities are also found across the world, notably Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, Australia, Canada,...

 descent. They were known as Malabar
Malabars
Malabars is an appellation originating from the colonial era that was used by Westerners to refer to all the people of South India...

 and originally arrived in the 19th century from other French Territories, namely Réunion
Réunion
Réunion is a French island with a population of about 800,000 located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about south west of Mauritius, the nearest island.Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France...

.

New Caledonia has several descendants of Tamils, whose parents intermarried with the local population already in the last century. New Caledonia requires a special study since a large number of Tamils went there as laborers and a report in a book published about 1919 states that of the Chinese, Indians and Javanese who colonized new Caledonia, the Indians gave satisfaction.
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