Indian New Zealanders are persons of Indian origin or descent, living in New Zealand. The term includes Indians born in New Zealand, as well as immigrants from India, Fiji, as well as other regions of Asia, parts of Africa such as South Africa as well as East Africa, and furthermore, from other parts of the world. The term Indian New Zealander applies to any New Zealanders with one or both parents of Indian heritage. Although sometimes the Indo-Kiwi definition has been expanded to people with mixed racial parentage with one Indian parent or grandparent, this can be controversial as it generally tends to remove the ethnic heritage or identity of the foreign parent or grandparent which may be termed as insensitive to those with mixed parentage, who tend to value both their Indian and non-Indian parents and grandparents.
Indian New Zealanders are the fastest growing Kiwi ethnic group, and the second largest group of New Zealand Asians after Chinese. The largest number of Indians living in New Zealand are from Fiji. The fifth largest language in New Zealand is Hindi, shown in the 2018 census. According to ENZ.org (a New Zealand Government affiliate), since 2011, 18,000 Indians have migrated to New Zealand. In 2011, the Indian population in New Zealand was 155,000, so there are 174,000 Indians in New Zealand (2014) due to the additional immigration of 18,000. Most early New Zealand Indians were of Punjabi or Gujarati descent.
History
Indians began to arrive in New Zealand in the late eighteenth century, mostly as crews on British ships. The earliest known Indians to set foot in New Zealand were Muslim lascars who arrived in Dec 1769 on the ship Saint Jean Baptiste captained by Frenchman Jean François Marie de Surville sailing from Pondicherry a union territory town bounded by the southeastern Tamil Nadu state, India. Their arrival marks the beginning of Indian presence in New Zealand, in which hundreds of unnamed Indian lascars visited New Zealand on European ships in order to procure timber and seal skins.
The period of Indian settlement begins with the earliest known Indian resident of New Zealand, a lascar of Bengali descent from the visiting ship City of Edinburgh who jumped ship in 1809 in the Bay of Islands to live with a Māori wife. Another took up residence on Stewart Island around the same time.
Possibly the earliest non-Māori settlers of the Otago region of South Island were three Indian lascars who deserted ship to live among the Maori in 1813. There, they assisted the Ngāi Tahu by passing on new skills and technologies, including how to attack colonial European vessels in the rain when their guns could not be fired. They integrated into Māori culture completely, participating in Tā moko and taking on Māori names.
The late 1800s and early 1900s saw the first wave of migration of Indians arriving in the country. A number of them came directly to New Zealand but some came via Fiji and others via other British colonies such as Burma. A large number of these early migrants were Indian teenagers, mainly from Punjab and Gujarat. They were generally looked after by the Māori community, and tended to have unions with Māori women.
Official policy in New Zealand to restrict non-European immigration resulted in difficulties for Indians to enter the country in the 1920s. Groups like The White New Zealand League, established in 1926, was opposed to both Chinese and Indian immigration because it was seen as a threat to the economic prosperity of European New Zealanders. Racial tensions between local Indians and Pākehā/Europeans lasted for decades in Pukekohe. Until the late 1950s, Indians there were excluded from barbershops, hair salons, bars, and balcony seats in cinemas, and could not join the local growers' association. At this time, a large number of Punjabi Sikhs, who often had farming experience, settled in the Waikato district and took up dairy farming.
Before the 1970s it remained difficult for Indians not related to the earlier immigrants to enter New Zealand. However, a small number of Fijian Indians and Indian-descent refugees from Uganda arrived in the country. By the 1980s, the official attitude towards Asian immigration relaxed and an increased number of Indians arrived in New Zealand.