Here we have a POD of 1857 when India officially became a crown colony. Indian indenture labour was used throughout the British empire. eg. In Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana,East Africa,etc. The challenge is to make at least 6 Indian majority countries outside of South Asia (5 of whom must be Hindu majority) and the population of the Indian diaspora must be at least 150 million by the year 2019.
AHC:Largest possible Indian diaspora globally
- Thread starter Rajveer Naha
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Maybe Indian laborers go to the United States as well. There was agitation among Southern planters to import Chinese labor to work on their farms to replace freed slaves, but they did not come in significant numbers during that era.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Labor_in_the_Southern_United_States
Change around a few things, and it is not impossible to imagine a scenario where many South Asian workers come to the American South. Blocked from marrying whites formally and informally and lacking many women from India, at least in the initial wave of immigration, many of these laborers will marry and have children with African American women. To avoid the unique strain of anti-black racism endemic to the South, it is not unimaginable that a significant number of these biracial children will eventually start to identify solely as Indian.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Labor_in_the_Southern_United_States
Change around a few things, and it is not impossible to imagine a scenario where many South Asian workers come to the American South. Blocked from marrying whites formally and informally and lacking many women from India, at least in the initial wave of immigration, many of these laborers will marry and have children with African American women. To avoid the unique strain of anti-black racism endemic to the South, it is not unimaginable that a significant number of these biracial children will eventually start to identify solely as Indian.
Surprisingly easy, actually. Mauritius and Guyana are majority Indian as it is (about 60%), and Indo-Trinidadians and Tobagonians narrowly edge out at 35%. Fiji used to be Indian majority too until the 1980s, and Suriname isn't that far off either (though the Afro-Suriname is still somewhat far ahead in numbers). And then there are the huge diasporas in the Gulf countries, who seem like one major uprising away from toppling the Arab monarchies. Yea, very doable.
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If you include Bangladesh and Pakistani migrants as " Indians " I am pretty sure we have 150 million already I mean the Indian government gave a rough figure of 32 million Indians working abroad this is not including Nepal which has 2-3 million Indian population, plus another 15 million are persons of Indian origin. The UN estimates that 17 million people have Indian decent and that's a conservative estimate. So you have 70-75 million. I think Pakistan and Bangladesh have a similar diaspora.
The real AHC is to have 300 million abroad
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Yeah of course very much true but how do you plan to achieve the required Hindu majorities. For receiving the benefits the Christian populace enjoyed many are surely going to convert.
Deleted member 116192
Or supposing that Hindus form 5-8 percent of the population in Canada , Australia and all over the commonwealth of Nations what would the impact on Indian independence movement? Or say you have 2-3 percent minority in USA. And how would this diaspora affect India's economic development?
If it wasn't for the Hindu proscription of kalapani, Indians would definitely be a greater proportion of the population all over the rim of the Indian Ocean and India would probably have done a much better job faring against maritime powers like Portugal and England. India is perhaps the most ideally placed country in the world to engage in maritime trade, yet the Hindu proscription against crossing the ocean served as a cultural handicap. That seems to have broken down in recent decades, and as a non-Hindu I can't say how prominent it is now, however.
I think the concept of 'Kalapani' is now considered a silly forgotten superstition and is ignored by all who intend to travel.
That's good to know, thanks for the insight - when did that view become widespread though?
Koprulu Mustafa Pasha
Gone Fishin'
The Deep South maybe? Not the finest places to live but a lot of work.
Kalapani is real (that is just the Hindi name for it, but the concept appears by other names elsewhere in India) but only Brahmins and temple priests pay any mind to it. The references to it are found in a very narrow set of Vedic-era scriptures. The extent to which anyone followed the policy is very spotty--on Wikipedia it lists the Bania community as one which was supposedly very mindful of the taboo and refused to even cross the Indus... and yet members of the Bania were present as far west as Central Persia and as far north as Bukhara as bankers and traders. This is, of course, to say nothing of the massive Indian immigration to and influence on Southeast Asia-- even if the later phases of that process were led by Indian and Sri Lankan Buddhists, the early phases were Hindu-led. So while crossing the sea may (even today!) hinder your chances of becoming head priest somewhere, the vast majority of the population has never really cared, and especially not the many thousands who made their fortunes on overseas trade. This is especially true in South India and Bengal, where sea-related taboos have next to no relevance (fish/other seafood is usually consumed a lot more).
As for why Indian navies didn't fare so well against European maritime powers... I'd credit this partly to European ships being generally better after passing all the tests that inter-Atlantic travel put on them, and to many of India's possible naval powers (e.g. Nawabate of Bengal, Tamil/Andhra coasts) getting knocked out early on. Also while India's coast is very large, at the turn of the 1700s the coast was either ruled by 1) tiny or mid-size states dominated by a single port or two, like the Kerala princely states or Baloch-ruled Sindh, or 2) land-based states to whom the coast was a profitable sideshow but a sideshow nonetheless. Mysore, Punjabm the Marathas, and the Mughals all fall in this category. The kind of happy medium attained by states like Portugal or England (big enough to actually have resources to spend on the navy, but not so sprawling as to have to account for several other fronts) didn't have any clear parallel in India I think.
Perhaps some form of the East India Company (or such like) using India as a springboard for further colonization of Asia, using Indians in most positions? Colonial troops,some laborers, agents, administrators, etc.?
Putting Indians in positions of authority in other colonies is OTL. Britain (EIC and Raj) hired Indians as administrators in Burma, and plenty of Indians moved there on their own initiative seeking opportunities during the colonial period. Meanwhile, Sikhs (Punjabis of all faiths were the backbone of the British Indian Army, a pattern that still remains in India and especially Pakistan) worked as policemen and gendarmes as far afield as Hong Kong and the Shanghai International Zone. The community in Burma faced some persecution in the Ne Win era which led to many leaving (a somewhat less severe version of the version of the expulsion from Uganda), but many are still around.
I think that it wouldn't be a stretch for Indians to be used in the Aden Colony, though given the existing massive size of the postwar Indian diaspora in the Middle East this probably wouldn't contribute much to OP's challenge.
So if Indians continued to emigrate in large numbers into the carribean and many due to British policy to Oceania ( I mean Solomon Islands) then we can possibly have Indian and Hindu majorities in Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, Solomon Islands and Fiji with a total diaspora of ~250 million people along with a vibrant Indian culture spread across three continents.
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The biggest deterrent to a larger Indian emigration within the empire was racism. In Canada case before WW1 a wealthy Indian prince paid for a ship to take few hundred Indians to Canada. When the ship arrived in Vancouver harbor the Canadian authorities refused entry to the “British citizens”. In the end they were shipped back to India.
Have a welcoming attitude in Australia, South Africa, Canada and rest of empire so that Indians who embraced their Britishness could move freely like Europeans then you could have very large Indian disporia in many countries.
Don’t know if they continue in Africa. Or with a larger Indian presence there what happened in Uganda is more wide spread. For in Africa many African felt the Indians were colonizers like the Europeans.
Have a welcoming attitude in Australia, South Africa, Canada and rest of empire so that Indians who embraced their Britishness could move freely like Europeans then you could have very large Indian disporia in many countries.
Don’t know if they continue in Africa. Or with a larger Indian presence there what happened in Uganda is more wide spread. For in Africa many African felt the Indians were colonizers like the Europeans.
The post independence United India decides that with GBs withdrawal from the gulf it needs to protect its oil interests, some of the gulf states object to immigration of Indian workers and limit rights to them but the appearance of INS Vikrant etc makes them reject such "european" racism........
Gulf states with majority Indian population, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Aden.......
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The 1932 Imperial Conference supposedly made Indians equal to whites in the empire and (in the case of Kenya) allowed them
Have it become Empire-wide policy that Indians are officially white and there'd probably be a lot more opportunity and temptation for Indians to move to places.
In Kenya Indians were supposed to be allowed to settle in the White-reserved highlands, but that didn't pan out. If immigration were unrestricted, I can see East Africa getting a very large Indian population.
There was a proposal to settle a large number of Indian veterans (Punjabis specifically I think) in the Mesopotamia mandate.
Malaya, East Africa, Southern Africa, Kuwait, Mesopotamia, Burma, Aden, Somaliland, Qatar, and Bahrain can all receive lots of Indian immigration.
Have it become Empire-wide policy that Indians are officially white and there'd probably be a lot more opportunity and temptation for Indians to move to places.
In Kenya Indians were supposed to be allowed to settle in the White-reserved highlands, but that didn't pan out. If immigration were unrestricted, I can see East Africa getting a very large Indian population.
There was a proposal to settle a large number of Indian veterans (Punjabis specifically I think) in the Mesopotamia mandate.
Malaya, East Africa, Southern Africa, Kuwait, Mesopotamia, Burma, Aden, Somaliland, Qatar, and Bahrain can all receive lots of Indian immigration.
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