Mauritius: An immigration story

While Tracing the Tribe is focused on Jewish genealogy, the inclusion of unusual, little-known records for other peoples is also important to place our own immigration and genealogy issues into perspective.

From The Hindu newspaper, comes this story concerning Mauritius and the Indian immigration, titled "A necessary exile."

From 1829-1850 until 1929, some 5 million poor Indians, mostly from Tamil-Telugu, Madras and Bihar) migrated to Mauritius; about 40% were women.

At Moka, the Indian Folk Museum of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute is dedicated to keeping alive immigrants' history. Some 2,00,000 photographs and half a million coolie records including birth, death and marriage registers, dating from 1842 to 1920 are part of its impressive archives, easily making it the largest on indentured labour anywhere in the world.