The Little India's of the world

Yesterday (Saturday 12th June 2021) I drove past Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple, Sri Vadapathira Kaliamman Temple, Sri Srinivasa Perumal and the Sri Mariamman Temple Singapore's oldest Hindu temple built in 1827 ( see pic below) , I was of course In Little India Singapore. Sitting in the thought bar this week it’s about how these enclaves titled Little India evolved around the world.

SINGAPORE

The Little India area is reported to have developed along the Serangoon River originally made it attractive for raising cattle, and trade in livestock was once prominent in the area. Eventually, other economic activity developed, traders settled on Veerasamy Road, Kadayanallur Road ,Hindoo Road and Perumal Road among many other Indian related names. It’s only natural to assume that it’s the availability of water (Rivers) which is the prime source of attraction for any civilisation and then comes settlements and worship places.

Serangoon Road, the main thoroughfare cutting across little India is decorated during every Indian festival be it Deepavali (see pic below) or Pongal ( see pic below) . Now the question is why is Singapore Tamil centric? The answer to that is that about 55% of the Indian origin people are Tamils coming from Tamil Nadu or Sri Lanka , 7.x% Malayalee, 5.X % Sikh and 1.X% Gujarati. You may want to know that Sellappan Ramanathan popularly known as SR Nathan a Tamil origin person was the longest serving president of Singapore, the current law minister is K Shanmugam , Dr Vivian Balakrishnan is the Minister for Foreign Affairs, S. Iswaran is Minister for Communications and Information and Tamil is officially the 4th official state language of Singapore.                                                        

USA & UK

India Square in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States, is one of at least 24 Indian American enclaves characterized as a Little India which have emerged within the New York City Metropolitan Area,India Square, also known as "Little India," or Little Gujarat. The largest concentration of Indian origin people in all of UK can be found in West London around either the Southall or Wembley areas. The Punjabi community here is so dominant that it's also called Little Punjab ( see pic below) .

AFRICA

The largest Indian enclave is in Durban South Africa, It is here that MK Gandhi ( see pic below) who arrived by a ship on 1893 was asked to fight a case for Dada Abdullah in another city Pretoria , it is on this train journey to Pretoria that Mr Gandhi faced humiliation as a black skinned man and the rest is history .

MIDDLE EAST

They say that local Arabs in Bur Dubai know Malayalam as that’s the language spoken most in this part of Dubai. Businesses in the largest sheikhdoms in the UAE, Dubai and Abu Dhabi continued to use the Indian Rupee even after India's independence in 1947. But its popularity strained India's foreign reserves, and so in 1959 the Indian government created the Gulf rupee ( see pic below) , initially at par with the Indian rupee. It was introduced as a replacement for the Indian rupee for circulation exclusively outside the country, which included apart from the states making up the UAE, the nations of Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain. On 6 June 1966, India devalued the Gulf rupee against the Indian rupee. Following the devaluation, several of the states still using the Gulf rupee adopted their own currencies. The rest is history again.

MALAYSIA & INDONESIA

Little India in Kualalumpur is in a place called Brickfields (see pic below) and in the city of Penang it is in George Town ( see pic below) . Harris Park about 22 KM away from Sydney Central is called Little India of Sydney (see pic below) and little India of Jakarta is in a place called Pasar Baru , this place used to house Bombay Saree house and many other Indian style shops that sells various things, ranging from Indian jewellery to prayer items to Indian spices.

When you are in India one is either a Tamil or a Gujju or a Bengali but outside India all are Indians the only point to be noted is who dominates it like the Tamils in Singapore or Malaysia or the Malayalees in the Middle East or Sikhs in UK. With a population of 1.35 Billion and 22 official languages and 121 languages spoken by at least 10 000 people there are another 19 500 mother tongues spoken in India

No wonder there are Little India s in every continent