Historical Roots and Evolution of the Indian Diaspora in Europe

The story of Indians in Europe is not a recent one. It stretches back centuries – from ancient trade routes linking India to the Roman world, through the colonial era that transported Indian soldiers and laborers to European soil, to the post-war waves of migrants who rebuilt European economies and quietly transformed its cultural landscape. Today, more than 2 million people of Indian origin live across Europe, making the Indian diaspora one of the continent’s most significant and enduring migrant communities. Understanding how this community came to be requires going back to the very beginning.

Ancient trade and the earliest connections 🔗

Long before the word “diaspora” entered academic vocabulary, Indian merchants were already forging ties with European civilizations. The historical evolution of the Indian diaspora goes back at least two thousand years, with early Indian traders establishing commercial contact with Roman merchants through Mediterranean ports as far back as the 1st century BCE. Spices, textiles, and precious stones moved westward along these routes, while gold and silver flowed eastward into the Indian subcontinent. These were not just economic exchanges – they were the first threads of a relationship between two distant civilizations.

One of the earliest documented migrations from the Indian subcontinent toward Europe involved the Romani people, believed to have originated in what is now the state of Rajasthan. Around the time of Emperor Kanishka in the 1st century AD, this group emigrated from India toward the northwest and eventually settled in Eastern Europe, where their descendants remain to this day. While it would be anachronistic to call this the “Indian diaspora” in the modern sense, it represents the earliest physical movement of Indian-origin peoples to European lands.

By the 16th and 17th centuries, Indian merchant networks had extended further into continental Europe. People from Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and cities like Delhi, Allahabad, and Bombay migrated to Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Russia during the mid-sixteenth century. Known as “Multanis,” “Shikarpuris,” and “Banias,” they formed what historians have called an Indian Merchant Diaspora. Russian chroniclers even recorded the presence of Hindu traders in Moscow and St. Petersburg during the 18th century, and an Indian merchant colony was established as early as 1610 in the Volga-Tsardom of Russia.

The colonial era: a turning point in Indian migration to Europe 🔗

The most decisive chapter in the history of the Indian presence in Europe was written during the colonial period. As the British Empire expanded its reach across the globe, India became its most vital resource – not just in terms of raw materials, but in terms of human labor and military manpower.

Indentured labor and the plantation colonies 🔗

When Britain abolished slavery in 1833, its colonies urgently needed an alternative workforce. To meet this demand, the British established the system of indentured labor migration from the Indian subcontinent. In 1834, Britain began exporting bonded Indian labor to Mauritius, and within a decade, this small-scale migration became a mass movement. France and the Netherlands replicated this system, also drawing Indian workers to their colonies. While most of these workers did not migrate directly to Europe, their descendants – particularly those in Suriname – would later settle in the Netherlands, forming a major strand of what became the Dutch-Indian diaspora.

The Netherlands is today home to about a quarter-million people of Indian origin, including approximately 200,000 Indo-Surinamese – the majority of whom are descendants of laborers brought to Suriname under the indenture system. Though Indo-Dutch contact goes back more than 400 years, Indians first started settling in the Netherlands only in the 1940s and 50s, many of them arriving via Suriname after periods of political instability.

Indian soldiers on European soil 🔗

Perhaps no moment more dramatically announced an Indian presence in Europe than the two World Wars. Over 1.4 million Indian soldiers and non-combatants served in World War I, including on the Western Front. These men took part in major battles at Ypres, La Bassée, Neuve Chapelle, the Somme, and Cambrai. Members of the Indian Corps won 13,000 medals fighting for England in World War I, including 12 Victoria Crosses.

Their experience of European society was transformative. Indian soldiers wrote home in amazement at how they were treated by European civilians – people who had not been conditioned by colonial attitudes to see them as inferior. This exposure reshaped Indian soldiers’ perceptions of the colonial order they had grown up under. For some, Europe ceased to be an abstraction; it became a place they had bled for and, in some cases, a place they would eventually return to.

India’s military commitment to the war effort was extraordinary by any measure. At the start of the war, the Indian army constituted the only overseas professional force available to Great Britain, and between August 1914 and December 1919, the Indian army recruited another 877,068 combatants and 563,369 non-combatants, of whom more than 1 million served overseas. This was not merely a military contribution – it was a human bridge between India and Europe, one that left lasting impressions on both sides.

Post-independence and post-war migration 🔗

India’s independence in 1947 and the end of World War II together set off a new and more sustained wave of Indian migration to Europe. When India gained independence, Indians migrated to European countries mostly for higher education or to learn industrial know-how. They did not stay permanently at first, but those who remained always kept regular contact with their families in India.

In the United Kingdom, the momentum shifted decisively after 1948. Following the Second World War and the breakup of the British Empire, Indian migration to the UK increased through the 1950s and 1960s, partly due to the British Nationality Act 1948, which enabled migration from the Commonwealth with very few limits. In the aftermath of the Second World War, these links facilitated significant flows of people from across the Commonwealth to Britain, helping to rebuild the economy, expand public services, and address acute labour shortages.

Britain’s labour shortages shaped post-war migration patterns from the subcontinent. It was primarily men from middle-ranking peasant families in Punjab – many of whom had previously served in the colonial army – who took up this opportunity. They found work in manufacturing, textile mills, and the service sector. The textile mills of Bradford and the foundries of Birmingham became magnets for Indian workers, particularly Sikhs from Punjab.

Secondary migration from East Africa 🔗

A distinct and often overlooked strand of the Indian migration story in Europe involves “twice migrants” – Indians who had first settled in East African countries like Kenya and Uganda under British colonial rule, and who were later forced to relocate. During the mid-1960s, anti-Indian discrimination in African countries resulted in a large-scale secondary migration of people of Indian origin to the UK. Of the current Indian diaspora in the UK, one-fifth is a result of this secondary migration from East African countries and South Africa.

The tightening of immigration policy 🔗

By the early 1960s, the volume of Commonwealth migration to the UK had grown large enough to prompt a political backlash. The Commonwealth Immigrants Acts of 1962 and 1968 and the Immigration Act of 1971 rescinded earlier residency rights by introducing work vouchers and ancestral requirements. Ironically, the threat of these restrictions accelerated settlement: many workers who had planned to return to India instead chose to stay and bring their families over before the rules tightened. This shift transformed what had been a labor diaspora into a permanent community.

Cultural exchange and the shaping of European societies 🔗

The Indian diaspora’s impact on Europe has never been purely economic. Cultural exchange has been woven into this history from the very beginning – from the spice traders who introduced Indian flavors to Roman kitchens, to the soldiers who brought their music and spiritual practices to the trenches of France.

In modern Europe, this cultural influence has deepened considerably. The first exclusively Indian restaurant in the UK, the Hindoostanee Coffee House, opened in 1810. Today there are around 9,000 Indian restaurants across the UK, and over 2 million Britons eat at Indian restaurants every week. Festivals like Diwali and Holi have moved well beyond the Indian community and are now publicly celebrated across European cities. Indian classical dance, Bollywood cinema, and yoga have entered the mainstream of European cultural life.

The contributions of Indian-origin writers and artists have also been substantial. British artist F. N. Souza was one of the first Indian artists to work in Britain after the war, and together with Avinash Chandra, they were the first British Indian artists to be included in the national collection at the Tate. Indian writers working in European languages – from Salman Rushdie to Vikram Seth – have reshaped literary traditions while exploring themes of identity, migration, and belonging.

German and broader continental European dimensions 🔗

While the UK has historically been the primary destination, the Indian diaspora has also taken root across continental Europe. In its attempts to accommodate the Indian diaspora, the German government allowed highly qualified Indians to extend their stay, and universities opened doors to teach courses in Indian languages, cultures, religions, and philosophies. Indian students were funded to conduct research in sciences and technology. Germany today receives the largest total number of immigrants among EU member states and is home to a significant and growing Indian community.

In countries like Poland and other Central European nations, the Indian diaspora is more recent and smaller, but its role in India-Europe relations is growing. These newer communities tend to be made up of students and skilled professionals rather than labor migrants, reflecting how the nature of Indian migration has shifted from manual labor toward knowledge-intensive industries over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries.

From labor migrants to political and economic actors 🔗

The evolution of the Indian diaspora in Europe mirrors broader shifts in global migration. What began as a movement driven by colonial compulsion – whether through indenture, military service, or economic necessity – has transformed into a diaspora defined by professional expertise, entrepreneurship, and political participation.

People of Indian descent currently hold prominent political positions in the UK, including cabinet portfolio roles, marking a transition from a community of immigrants to significant players in every sphere of British public life. Today, Indian nationals represent the largest overseas cohort within the NHS, and Indian entrepreneurs and tech professionals are among the most significant contributors to European innovation economies.

The shared cultural heritage that originally united Indians abroad – described in diaspora scholarship through concepts like jahaji bhai (ship brotherhood) – continues to serve as a unifying thread, even as regional, linguistic, and religious differences persist within the community. In Europe, Indians create their Bengali, Punjabi, and Telugu diasporas on the basis of regional cultures and languages, but when the question of Indian diaspora arises, they always feel part of it – it is the shared cultural heritage that lays the foundation.

What do you think? Given that the Indian diaspora in Europe has evolved from indentured laborers and colonial soldiers to political leaders and tech professionals, what does this trajectory reveal about how migrant communities transform their host societies over generations? And how does the colonial history that initiated much of this migration continue to shape the relationship between India and Europe today?

References

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