India in New Zealand
More years ago than I care to dwell on, much of my childhood was spent in a place called Havelock North in the Hawkes Bay. Around the place were small enclaves of old white folks, mostly retired missionaries and civil servants who had left India, for some reason, in 1947.
It never occurred to me, until years later covering an Indian cricket tour of New Zealand, that there was any link between the Raj and Havelock North. Or Napier, Clive, Hastings, or Auckland, for that matter.
Better informed, I wondered why Indian cricketers would want to play in cities named in honour of the British heroes of India’s colonisation and after men who crushed India’s First War of Independence.
Plainly, the honouring of Raj heroes has not deterred too many of the 97,000 Indians calling New Zealand home. And the 7000 or so Fiji Indians here, fleeing the wake of four coups, had more immediate worries than South Asian history.
I have no memory of Indians in the provincial New Zealand I grew up in; there was a sense that Waikato had a lot of men wearing turbans on dairy farms.
Punjabi and Gujarati folk, it turned out, had been in New Zealand almost from the beginning of the nation. In 1861, our history says, Australian Gabriel Reid found gold in Otago; history is silent on the fact that an Indian, Edward “Black Peter” Peter, told him where to look.
It wasn’t until I became a journalism student at 18 in Wellington that I knew any Indians at all. Those were the days of the Colombo Plan, which bought in hundreds of Asians for education, and so my first Indian came with Malaysians, Indonesians, a lot of Sri Lankans and quite a few Indians.
For a boy from the provinces it was all a rich mix.
For us baby boomers, the increasing arrival of Indians signalled a happy end to the oppression of the largely White – backed by the “Happy” Maori from the Pa – generation of the parents.
If there was a moment that tested it all, it was when in the mid 1980s ethnic Indians in Fiji briefly became the single largest racial group. An Indian dominated government came to power and was then overthrown by Sitiveni Rabuka in 1987.
There were misguided editorials saying that Indo Fijians had bought it on themselves; that they were too clannish, unwilling to inter-marry. Actually it was much more complicated than that, but as a result of Rabuka, Indo Fijians began arriving in large numbers, mainly in Auckland.
Fiji’s record of coups ensured a steady flow and they turned out to be great migrants for three basic reasons; they were well motivated, spoke English and understood the National Provincial Rugby Competition.
Then there were all other Indians; South African, Ugandan, Tanzanian and, of course, India.
Some odd things happened. By some accounts, Auckland has become the second largest Farsi city in the world after Mumbai.
Like most demographic trends, it can be hard to finger when, as some one living in the middle of it, you noticed it happening. The Fiji lot were easy to pick, thanks to politics, but the arrival of Indians in much larger numbers seemed to quietly happen.
I’ve theories for why it has happened so quietly and without the same resistance other migrant groups have suffering; the Dutch, Samoans and Chinese to name a few.
It’s not to say Indians never suffered racism here; history shows it was strong during the mid-20th Century. And no one is going to argue that Indians have had an easy road here.
These days though, I sense the majority population realises New Zealand’s population is too small to be closed to the world.
There is some dispute about Auckland’s Khyber Pass over whether it is named after the feature that Lord Auckland sent the British Army up, never to return. Others say after the Indian Mutiny, many of the British soldiers who fought in the Indian Mutiny came to New Zealand and settle. Some of them, it is said, built the road.
About the only “Indian” place name in New Zealand not directly named after something Indian, is Auckland’s Bombay Hills. It’s named after a ship….
More years ago than I care to dwell on, much of my childhood was spent in a place called Havelock North in the Hawkes Bay. Around the place were small enclaves of old white folks, mostly retired missionaries and civil servants who had left India, for some reason, in 1947.
It never occurred to me,...
More years ago than I care to dwell on, much of my childhood was spent in a place called Havelock North in the Hawkes Bay. Around the place were small enclaves of old white folks, mostly retired missionaries and civil servants who had left India, for some reason, in 1947.
It never occurred to me, until years later covering an Indian cricket tour of New Zealand, that there was any link between the Raj and Havelock North. Or Napier, Clive, Hastings, or Auckland, for that matter.
Better informed, I wondered why Indian cricketers would want to play in cities named in honour of the British heroes of India’s colonisation and after men who crushed India’s First War of Independence.
Plainly, the honouring of Raj heroes has not deterred too many of the 97,000 Indians calling New Zealand home. And the 7000 or so Fiji Indians here, fleeing the wake of four coups, had more immediate worries than South Asian history.
I have no memory of Indians in the provincial New Zealand I grew up in; there was a sense that Waikato had a lot of men wearing turbans on dairy farms.
Punjabi and Gujarati folk, it turned out, had been in New Zealand almost from the beginning of the nation. In 1861, our history says, Australian Gabriel Reid found gold in Otago; history is silent on the fact that an Indian, Edward “Black Peter” Peter, told him where to look.
It wasn’t until I became a journalism student at 18 in Wellington that I knew any Indians at all. Those were the days of the Colombo Plan, which bought in hundreds of Asians for education, and so my first Indian came with Malaysians, Indonesians, a lot of Sri Lankans and quite a few Indians.
For a boy from the provinces it was all a rich mix.
For us baby boomers, the increasing arrival of Indians signalled a happy end to the oppression of the largely White – backed by the “Happy” Maori from the Pa – generation of the parents.
If there was a moment that tested it all, it was when in the mid 1980s ethnic Indians in Fiji briefly became the single largest racial group. An Indian dominated government came to power and was then overthrown by Sitiveni Rabuka in 1987.
There were misguided editorials saying that Indo Fijians had bought it on themselves; that they were too clannish, unwilling to inter-marry. Actually it was much more complicated than that, but as a result of Rabuka, Indo Fijians began arriving in large numbers, mainly in Auckland.
Fiji’s record of coups ensured a steady flow and they turned out to be great migrants for three basic reasons; they were well motivated, spoke English and understood the National Provincial Rugby Competition.
Then there were all other Indians; South African, Ugandan, Tanzanian and, of course, India.
Some odd things happened. By some accounts, Auckland has become the second largest Farsi city in the world after Mumbai.
Like most demographic trends, it can be hard to finger when, as some one living in the middle of it, you noticed it happening. The Fiji lot were easy to pick, thanks to politics, but the arrival of Indians in much larger numbers seemed to quietly happen.
I’ve theories for why it has happened so quietly and without the same resistance other migrant groups have suffering; the Dutch, Samoans and Chinese to name a few.
It’s not to say Indians never suffered racism here; history shows it was strong during the mid-20th Century. And no one is going to argue that Indians have had an easy road here.
These days though, I sense the majority population realises New Zealand’s population is too small to be closed to the world.
There is some dispute about Auckland’s Khyber Pass over whether it is named after the feature that Lord Auckland sent the British Army up, never to return. Others say after the Indian Mutiny, many of the British soldiers who fought in the Indian Mutiny came to New Zealand and settle. Some of them, it is said, built the road.
About the only “Indian” place name in New Zealand not directly named after something Indian, is Auckland’s Bombay Hills. It’s named after a ship….
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