Indians in The United Arab Emirates - History

History

Countries in the Persian Gulf region have had a long-established economic and political link with India. Trucial Oman (now UAE), was nominally independent in the 19th century but was administered by the British Raj; trade and banking sectors in the territory were administered by the Khoja and Kutchi communities of India. In 1853, the rulers of the emirates signed a Perpetual Maritime Truce with the British, effectively bringing the region under Britain's sphere of influence. Administered from British India, the emirates developed commonalities with South Asia. Indian Rupees were used as currency, as were Indian stamps (overlaid with the name of the emirate) for postal correspondence. A fairly homogeneous society at the turn of the 20th century, the region that now comprises the UAE experienced an economic boom as a result of the pearling industry; the few Indian traders emigrating to the emirates moved to the coastal towns and remained on the fringes of Emirati society. Dubai had traditionally served as an entrepôt for trade between the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent and was dominated by Hindu merchants in both gold and textile trade. Dubai was also an important trading post for Indians prior to the discovery of oil (in commercial quantities) in the UAE in 1959; the emirate had been at the centre of a smuggling route of gold to India via small boats, where the importation of gold was illegal.

The discovery of oil brought with it an influx of workers from India in the 1960s. Many came via sea, a trip of about three days from Bombay (now Mumbai) to Dubai. Most of the shopkeepers were from the state of Kerala, or were Indian Arabs, descendants of Arabs who had previously emigrated to India. It was also in the late 1960s that the Hindu Temple and first Indian schools were built for expatriate Indian families. Indian migration to the UAE drastically increased in the 1970s and 1980s, with the expansion of the oil industry and the growth of free trade in Dubai. Annual migration of Indians to the UAE, which stood at 4,600 in 1975, rose to over 125,000 by 1985, and stood at nearly 200,000 in 1999.