[4][5] Indians had been employed for a long time on the European ships trading in Colonial India and the East Indies.

[6] 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 French East India Company's 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.

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.

[10] Possibly the earliest non-Māori settlers of the Otago region of South Island were three Indian lascars who deserted ship to live among the Māori in 1813.

[11] 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.

[13] Official policy in New Zealand to restrict non-European immigration resulted in difficulties for Indians to enter the country in the 1920s.

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.

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.

He further claimed, that Māori were descended from Hindu Brahmins who spread south from India.