Status
Later, approximately 15,000 Indian indentured labourers, who were mainly speakers of Dravidian languages (Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam), were brought from South India. By this time Fijian Hindi was well established as the lingua franca of Indo-Fijians and the Southern Indian labourers had to learn it to communicate with the more numerous Northern Indians and their European overseers. After the end of the indenture system, Indians who spoke Gujarati and Punjabi arrived in Fiji as free immigrants. A few Indo-Fijians speak Tamil, Telugu and Gujarati at home, but all are fluently conversant and able to communicate using Fijian Hindi. The census reports of 1956 and 1966 shows the extent to which Fijian Hindi (referred to as 'Hindustani' in the census) was being spoken in Indo-Fijian households.
| Language | Number of households in 1956 | Number of households in 1966 |
|---|---|---|
| Hindustani | 17,164 | 30,726 |
| Hindi | 3,644 | 783 |
| Tamil | 1,498 | 999 |
| Urdu | 1,233 | 534 |
| Gujarati | 830 | 930 |
| Telugu | 797 | 301 |
| Punjabi | 468 | 175 |
| Malayalam | 134 | 47 |
| Other | 90 | 359 |
Fiji Hindi is also understood and even spoken by Indigenous Fijians in areas of Fiji where there are large Indo-Fijian communities. Following the recent political upheaval in Fiji, a large number of Indo-Fijians have emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, where they have largely maintained their traditional Indo-Fijian culture, language, and religion.
Unlike Hindustani (an omnibus term covering both Hindi and Urdu), which is mandated in the Constitution of Fiji as one of three official languages (the others being English and native-Fijian), Fijian Hindi has no formal recognition; therefore, it is not used in the Fijian education system or in religious ceremonies or other formal contexts, but is the patois of Indo-Fijians in their day-to-day conversations.
Some writers have begun to use Fijian Hindi, which, until very recently was used as a spoken language only, as a literary language. However, the Bible has now been translated into Fijian Hindi, and the University of the South Pacific has recently begun offering courses in the language. Fijian Hindi is written using both the Latin script and the Devanagari script.
A Fijian Hindi movie has also been produced depicting Indo-Fijian life and is based on a play by local playwright, Raymond Pillai.
Read more about this topic: Fiji Hindi
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