Chapter 04
Girmit, Fiji Hindi and Indo-Fijian Music
5 min
On 14 May 1879, the Leonidas brought the first indentured labourers from British India to Fiji. By the end of the system, more than sixty thousand people had arrived under contracts known locally through the word girmit, adapted from “agreement.” They came with different languages, religions and regional practices. Plantation life, settlement, marriage, worship, education and contact with iTaukei and English speakers created new Fiji histories.
What to listen for
Music was part of that transformation. It survived in devotional singing, wedding repertory and remembered forms; it also changed through radio, cinema, local bands, studios and migration. Indo-Fijian music is not an Indian chapter accidentally located in the Pacific. It is music made through generations in Fiji.
Fiji Hindi carries a local history
Fiji Hindi developed especially from Awadhi and Bhojpuri, with influence from other South Asian languages, iTaukei and English. It became a language of home, humour and everyday identity, while standard Hindi and Urdu often held more formal roles in school, religion, radio and literature.
This difference can be audible. A wedding song learned from a grandmother, a formal bhajan text, a Hindi film cover and a Fiji Hindi pop lyric may all be called “Hindi music” by an outsider. Their language, occasion and authority are different.
Sohar-type songs adapted from Bhojpuri traditions became part of Indo-Fijian weddings. Their survival did not mean perfect preservation. Families changed words, melodies and performance roles. Specialist singers later travelled a paid wedding circuit. A living form can have ancestry and still be locally authored.
Bhajan is a practice, not just a playlist label
In 2026, Raghwa Nand described beginning bhajan singing in the cane fields around Tavua, later forming a five-member group and performing across Fiji. He played harmonium, learned through a guru and sang at weddings, funerals and puja observances. The words could come from a devotional book, while musicians made the tune and shaped the performance.
That detail matters. It reveals authorship inside continuity. Harmonium may sustain melody and support the voice; hand percussion marks cycles and intensifies response. A lead singer must know text, pronunciation and melodic route, but also how long the occasion needs the song to live.
Kali Charan, known as the “Delta Tiger,” offers another named route through Navasa and Nausori. Viveka Nand, a singer, tabla and sitar player, recorded at Fiji Broadcasting House as a child and later taught generations of musicians. His recording of “Sai Ki Nagaria” with Bhaskara Nand offers an exact devotional entrance.
Qawwali, ghazal and light-classical routes
Fiji's Indo-Muslim communities brought and developed their own sacred and social music. Qawwali in Fiji needs actual performers and occasions; the word cannot serve as a general “Sufi” colour. Ghazal and light-classical performance likewise require attention to poetry, voice and training.
The recorded “Light Classical Melody” by Balram Dass, Satnik Dass and Subba Raju is valuable because the performers are named even though the title is generic. Shakuntla Devi's live Fiji Indian television performance preserves a singer and medium despite an absent track title. These catalogue gaps are reminders that broadcast history often survives unevenly.
Current teacher-performers continue the line. Viveka Nand has worked with Suva's Indian Cultural Centre, and Jhankaar the Band, founded by percussionist Samresh Rao, combines classical Indian material, Bollywood songs and English-language repertory for present audiences. Their Girmit Gatha, Volumes I and II, provides a precise contemporary example: original songs shaped around girmit memory rather than another anonymous set of Bollywood covers. Their mixture is not confusion. It reflects what musicians and listeners in Fiji actually know.
Daya Nand and a Fiji-made popular circuit
Daya Nand entered local band life in Lautoka, playing guitar in the Gypsy Wreckers Band and winning Fiji Ka Sangeet Sitara in 1979. In 1988 he recorded with Procera Music engineer Ramesh Hargovind and Fiji-based musicians. His reggae remake of a Mohammed Rafi song became a major Hindi-radio success.
That story crosses several categories at once: Hindi cinema memory, Fiji reggae rhythm, a local competition, a Lautoka band, commercial recording and post-coup uncertainty. Calling the result a cover is accurate but insufficient. Arrangement and social timing made it a Fiji record.
Recording workers belong in the story. Engineers, guitarists, bassists, keyboard players and label staff created the sound that carried through radio and cassette. Migration could break up a band as members moved overseas, yet the same diaspora created new audiences in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.
The coups changed who could stay and where music travelled
The 1987 military coups deepened racial insecurity and accelerated Indo-Fijian emigration. Music did not provide a simple cure. It became one way people remembered Fiji, argued about belonging and maintained family language abroad.
The historical date should remain visible. A nostalgic song heard in Auckland or California can carry memories from before and after the coups, but the listener should not assume one emotional meaning. Diaspora is made from choice, pressure, opportunity and loss in different proportions for different people.
Today Fijiana, the Bay Area rapper Pallavi, places Indo-Fijian identity inside contemporary hip-hop, far from a heritage display. Her “Welcome to the Bay” (2025), produced by Yo Shub Made It, puts Fiji Hindi phrases, Indian-diaspora flute colours, 808s and Richmond geography inside one deliberately authored record. The track does not ask a listener to choose between Indo-Fijian and Bay Area identity; its subject is the life made where those histories meet.
Sumeet Tappoo works across devotional song, ghazal, classical and Sufi-labelled projects in a transnational Fiji-India career. These artists do not close the girmit story. They show that it continues to generate new musical selves.
Five entry points, five different occasions
- Viveka Nand and Bhaskara Nand — “Sai Ki Nagaria”: devotional voice and trained accompaniment. - Daya Nand — “Sundar Haath Sunehri Zulfein”: a Fiji Indian popular recording route. - Balram Dass, Satnik Dass and Subba Raju — “Light Classical Melody”: named ensemble work beyond film-song shorthand. - Jhankaar the Band — Girmit Gatha, Volumes I and II: original girmit songs carried by a current Fiji ensemble. - Fijiana — “Welcome to the Bay” (2025): Indo-Fijian diaspora authorship in a present hip-hop language.
No single item represents the community. Together they replace the phrase “Indian influence” with people, places and work.
