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Guyana is a small country on the northeastern coast of South America. The inland forests contain mineral deposits, but the vast majority of the population lives on the coastal plain where sugarcane is grown. The descendants of the Indian indentured workers, who were brought in to work on the sugar plantations starting in 1838, now make up a small majority of the population. Most still live in the small settlements they share with the Afro-Guyanese, and many from both communities still work in the sugarcane industry. Before the Indians began to arrive in 1838, the original Dutch …

Fiji is made up of hundreds of small islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The two largest islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu are adjacent to each other and have a more diverse population than the other islands. On Viti Levu the early settlers on the western end of the island tended to come from the Melanesian islands to the west, and those on the east and the nearby island of Bau came from the Polynesian islands to the east. There were dozens of independent chiefs who governed their own tikina or group, but there were efforts to invoke a civil order or vanua to which they all subscribed and …

Indian indentured workers started to arrive in Trinidad in 1845. The cultural situation that they met there was complex. Grand Spanish churches were to be found here and there. French planters waited to add workers to the plantations that they already ran with laborers whose ancestors had been slaves from West Africa. And British government officials at every level were settling in to work and perhaps stay permanently in this comfortable multiracial society. From the beginning, the Indian workers had many options. They were assigned on arrival to a sugarcane plantat…

Hindu religious practice is manifold. Individuals walking along a mountaintop or a river are sometimes overcome with a sense of reverence. If they lean a slab of rock against a tree or create an icon of sand to commemorate that experience, they may find themselves coming back to that sacred place. People in their home often make a vow about what they will eat or how long they will fast or pray. They may dedicate a place in their home for an altar of the images they wish to worship. In the villag…

Mauritius is a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It was uninhabited until the European colonial powers began sailing in that direction, but its hospitable climate and fertile volcanic soils soon attracted settlers, and it now has one of the most complex cultural mixes found anywhere on the planet. With about 70% of the population tracing their ancestry to India, it is not surprising that the majority of the population describe themselves as “Hindu,” but the cultural environment in which this identity developed was an exceedingly complex one. The Dutch brought in African …