The Indian Diaspora Europe Forgot

After over three months at sea, the Lalla Rookh’s passengers were likely in a hurry to disembark, even 9,000 miles away from home. The Indians aboard — over 270 men, 70 women, and 50 children — hailed largely from the landlocked states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, far from any coastline. But, once at port, they were forced to wait a day aboard to suss out any diseases, leaving the confines of their vessel only on June 5, 1873. Their uneasy first steps in the bustling port of Paramaribo would mark a completely new chapter for the Dutch colony of Surinam, which Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul once called a “tulip-less Holland.” 

Nearly a century later, these very people — who had toiled as indentured laborers for years — would see their former colonizers try to strip them of their citizenship. But the move backfired: instead, it helped forge one of Europe’s most vibrant Indian diasporas, second in size only to the United Kingdom’s.