[10] The major home districts of Fiji's North Indian labourers were Basti, Gonda, Lucknow, Kanpur, Faizabad, Ballia, Ghazipur, Gorakhpur, Sultanpur, Siwan, Shahabad, Saran, and Azamgarh, in the present-day Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh and the present-day Bhojpur region of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand.

[14] The early ancestors of Indo-Fijians came from different regions of South Asia, most coming from rural villages in Northern and Southern India.

In January 1879, thirty-one South Asians, who had originally been indentured labourers in Réunion, were brought from New Caledonia to Fiji under contract to work on a plantation in Taveuni.

Living conditions on the sugar cane plantations, on which most of the girmityas (indentured labourers) worked, had poor standards which resembled that of slavery.

[7] Public outrage in the United Kingdom and British India over human rights abuses of indentured labourers, such as the story of Kunti and Naraini played a factor in abolishing the scheme in 1916.

The government and other employers brought clerks, policemen, artisans, gardeners, experienced agricultural workers, a doctor and a school teacher.

As a result, a number of Fiji Indians volunteered for the New Zealand Army while one served in Europe during the First World War.

Prior to the Second World War, soldiers served voluntarily and were paid "capitation grants" according to efficiency ratings without regard to race.

In 1939, during the mobilisation of the Fiji Defence Force, the colonial government changed its payment system to four shillings per day for enlisted men of European descent while enlisted men of non-European descent were paid only two shillings per day; the Indian Platoon quickly disputed this disparity in pay.

The colonial government, fearing this dissidence would eventually be shared by the Native Fijians, decided to disband the Indian platoon in 1940 citing lack of available equipment, such as military armour, as their reason.

At the time, there was opposition to this from some native Fijians who feared that any such move would deprive them of the special privileges they had enjoyed since cession in 1874.

[citation needed] In 2017, The paramount chief of Rewa, Ro Teimumu Kepa, announced that the descendants of indentured labourers, who were brought to Fiji during colonial period as a cheap labor, now officially belong to the Vanua (tribal land) of Noco and Rewa, and will be known as the iCavuti of "Luvedra na Ratu" (The Children of the Ratu).

Historically, the subcontinent of South Asia was informally referred to as "India" by foreign travelers and cartographers, the people living there were called 'Indians'.

It is commonly referred as South Asia, a more accurate geographic description and preferred term in many academic and scholarly contexts.

The term is also more closely connected to the diaspora of the South Asian indentured labourers (or Coolies) who have settled in other countries, such as the Indo-Caribbeans, Indo-Mauritians, etc.

This term, 'Indo-Fijian', has been used by various political figures such as Frank Bainimarama and Sitiveni Rabuka, as well as writers such as Adrian Mayer and Brij Lal.

In 2006, Jone Navakamocea, Minister of State for National Planning in the Qarase government, called for the use of the term "Indo-Fijian" to be officially banned.

[22] Navakamocea lost office in the 2006 military coup when the army accused the Qarase government of anti-Fijian Indian racism and overthrew it.

The colonial rulers attempted to assuage Indo-Fijian discontent by providing for one of their number to be nominated to the Legislative Council from 1916 onwards.

A strike by Indo-Fijian municipal workers and Public Works Department employees, which began on 15 January 1920, ended in a riot which was forcibly quelled on 12 February; Manilal, widely blamed for the unrest, was deported.

[citation needed] Another strike, from January to July in 1921, led by Sadhu (priest) Vashist Muni, demanded higher rates of pay for workers of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR), the unconditional return of Manilal, and the release of imprisoned 1920 strikers.

The Arya Samaj began by establishing schools and by using a newspaper of one of its supporters, the Fiji Samachar founded in 1923, to expound their views.

[citation needed] Prior to independence, Indo-Fijians sought a common electoral roll, based on the principle of "one man, one vote."

In a letter of support from the then head of the Methodist Church, Reverend Tomasi Kanilagi, to George Speight, the leader of 19 May 2000 armed takeover of Parliament, Reverend Kanilagi publicly expressed his intention to use the Methodist Church as a forum under which to unite all ethnic Fiji political parties.

[29] The Methodist church also supported forgiveness to those who plotted the coup in form of so-called "Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill".

The majority of Indo-Fijians came from northern, northern eastern and southeastern part of India and converse in what is known as Fiji Hindi (also known as 'Fiji Baat'), this language has been constructed from eastern Hindi dialects mixed with some native Fijian and some English loan words,[32] with some minorities speaking Gujarati, and Punjabi, and many who speak Tamil as their mother tongue with less fluency.

Indian Christians are a diverse body, with Methodists forming the largest group (26.2%), followed by the Assemblies of God (22.3%), Roman Catholics (17%), and Anglicans (5.8%).

The Indo-Fijian diaspora developed with people of South Asian ancestry leaving Fiji, mainly following the racially inspired coups of 1987 and 2000, to settle primarily in Australia, New Zealand, United States and Canada.

[citation needed] Following the military coup of 1987, many Indo-Fijians saw little future in staying in Fiji and tried to find any means to leave the country.

"If the trend continues, Fiji will be left with a large pool of poorly educated, unskilled work force with disastrous consequences on our social and economic infrastructure and levels of investment," he said on 19 June 2005.