While people think of the arrival of Indian migrants when thinking of the history of India in New Zealand – they consider, Indians landing on this island-nation, the story is not that simple; for it starts much earlier. The question is when was India’s interaction with this distant shore even initiated? How and in what ways did the ‘Indian factor’ manifest itself on this land mass or in its vicinity?
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Unlike Australia where an ancient presence of India’s maritime culture and merchants is documented, India had not quite left a distinct stamp of settlement on New Zealand before the colonial period.
But it’s not that India and New Zealand were always two isolated points in the globe. In the days when no ships, let alone modern planes or trains existed, India’s traders and culture traversed farther across the Indian Ocean than imagined! What’s more, their journeys into Southeast Asia had opened up trade networks to the wider Pacific and, by implication, even into its far reaches including New Zealand! India: One of the World’s Earliest Maritime Civilizations: Indian’s connection with the sea goes back a long way-even longer than its neighbors.
A maritime town named Lothal, dated more than 4000 years back with the oldest known dockyard discovered on Earth till date, provides proof to it.
From both the eastern and western coasts of India, enterprising sailors braved the waters across the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal using the predictable, seasonal monsoons as their guide. Ancient Indian mariners carried merchandise like spices, cotton cloth, precious stones, ivory and metal wares to the shores of Arabia, the African continent, and even into Southeast Asia. They not only carried goods but also languages, philosophies, religion, and even a scientific outlook across the seas.
For centuries, Indian influence spread through what is now Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia, evidence of which is still to be seen in form of inscriptions in Sanskrit language and temples and monuments depicting Hindu deities or the life of Buddha. The Pacific was Not Isolated For ages, historians viewed the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean as an entirely separate world, geographically and cultural, from the Old World, which included Europe and Asia. The rise of the intrepid Polynesians, navigators who were undoubtedly some of the greatest seafarers the world has ever produced, made the Pacific truly accessible, leading them to New Zealand about 13th century AD.
Although there is still no evidence of direct Indian landings on the New Zealand soil at any point in pre-colonial times, the island nation found itself integrated, albeit distantly, in the expanding maritime network of interactions facilitated by Indian traders traversing into Southeast Asia.
In essence, India was linked to the Pacific’s sphere of interaction centuries before it sent even its first direct contingent of migrants to the island nation!
Could Ancient Indians Have Reached New Zealand?
The question often raises the curiosity for those who’ve had a cursory look at Indian maritime history and have possibly also encountered some speculative reports that Indian mariners reached this remote part of the globe centuries earlier. However, historians are yet to produce a shred of evidence- archeological, epigraphic or documentary – in support of these ideas that can be conclusively proven.
At present, no Sanskrit inscriptions have been found on New Zealand soil and no material evidence of the kind left behind in various parts of South-East Asia has been found here.
Although the vast Indian maritime reach and the reach of the Polynesians into the vast Pacific have to be acknowledged, without concrete proof to back up the presence of ancient Indians in New Zealand, these stories will just remain conjecture and myths, fascinating though they may be. The First Documented Indians Connected with New Zealand The story of documented Indian presence in New Zealand does, however, have roots in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. During the colonial age of sailing ships, travel between India and New Zealand was typically undertaken using British vessels or ships belonging to other European nations that made journeys from India to Australia and eventually on to New Zealand.
The crew members of these ships included a significant number of Indian sailors, often called ‘lascars’ in historical records, who were primarily recruited from port cities in India like Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. These men, experienced mariners, would crew on the ships that regularly plied the routes across the Indian Ocean to the East and eventually sailed into the South Pacific. A few Indian sailors may have disembarked in New Zealand ports for brief periods while others may have eventually decided to settle there, but their individual stories seldom find any elaborate documentation.
Gujrati Traders Changed the Story The organized entry of Indians into New Zealand’s social and